


Doctor Who - Richelieu / Reader - Oh Lord, I need you by my side

by Samstown4077



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Action, Angst, Drama, F/M, Friendship, Humour, Present Tense, Romance, historical RPF - Freeform, reader/character fic, this started as a comedy and ended as a drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-03-13 15:04:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 39,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18943387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samstown4077/pseuds/Samstown4077
Summary: France 17th Century. The Tardis stands in the shadows, and there is only you, the companion left. The Doctor died, but you are here to save him. Having scattered himself through different time periods on earth, within different men, all sharing the same face, it's your quest to find them. One of them, Cardinal Richelieu, First Minister of France. The man you fear the most and the man you will fall for. But time is limited, and soon you will have to decide between him and the Doctor.





	1. Intro / Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I admit, after having to write a summary for this story, explaining it in words, I realised how confusing it must be for the reader. A Doctor Who story about Cardinal Richelieu -- welcome in the strange world of strange crossovers! It is mainly a story about Cardinal Richelieu, played by Peter Capaldi in The Musketeers. I throw into this story a companion, that is the reader of this story. I once wrote "The new companion or the opposite of impossible" which can be found under that exact title here on Ao3, where I send the reader as a companion into an adventure with the 12th Doctor. The Doctor here also will be the 12th Doctor but is not the main character. It is Cardinal Richelieu and his ongoing 'relationship' with the reader/companion. The story is rated Mature for later appearing content *wink* and might even go into an R rating.  
> This story lingers on my computer as a draft and in my head for 1.5 years by now, and I decided this is my next writing project. Thanks for giving it a chance. Enjoy the read!

 

_Intro_

With a slap, my hands clash against the blue outer shell of the Tardis. It’s the middle of the night, it’s warm, and I am out of breath. Somewhere in the dark, in the bushes, I hear a noise which makes me turn in agitation. Probably just an animal or the wind, still I peer into the darkness for long moments to make sure no one has followed me. It would be easy to enter the Tardis in search of shelter, but it’s nothing I am very keen for at that moment. Because it’s just the Tardis and me, the Companion. The Doctor is gone.

 

Actually, the Doctor is dead.

 

Yes, I know how you feel now, but don’t worry, he is dead, but not lost. I am on a mission now, for the Tardis, and the Doctor, and for all of time and space. It’s a bit complicated but bear with me.

Let’s begin with today, well, today in France 17th century, 1625 precisely, when I met someone, I never thought would be possible. 

It changed my life, and hopefully, when everything goes well, it will save the Doctor.

 

_Chapter One_

Two hours earlier.

I am not quite sure how I came here. I probably have misjudged one of those long corridors that all look the same - all fancy and endlessly long. With candles, armour and, of course,  full of guards and servants, at some point, I must have taken a wrong turn.

 

Ending up in front of a large wooden door that does look very heavy and not very welcoming, I realise it is the only way. A one-way ticket when I don’t want to go back all the obstacles of guards and possible discovery. It was hard enough to sneak here without being seen.

 

The upcoming dusk had been my friend, but I can't risk turning again. The dangers too high, this is not a video game — no restart. When I spoil it, I’ll ruin it for us all. So, getting caught wouldn't be recommendable.

Seizing up the door for another moment, I grasp that this one looks way too important to be a door to the next storeroom. I sigh, I have a bad feeling about this.

 

Going through my mind map of the court, I was able to memorise in advance; I figure that behind it should be some rooms and the windows of them should lead to the garden. From there it's just a harsh sprint out of this mess. Should be — another sigh.

 

I pull my cloak tight, and under it, my armour is rustling softly. A sword and a small musket are hanging loose. I wasn’t able to figure out how it had to be applied. My departure from the Tardis was a bit in haste. For a time machine, so far, my personal experience, the good girl is quite impatient. Hearing footsteps in the distance, I decide I should not defer more time. Delays have dangerous ends. Pushing my body weight into the heavy looking door, I enter.

 

The doors open lighter as I expect them and so it's a bit too much vigour I put into my motion when I basically fall into the room — a comical sight.

 

With a gasp, I manage to close the door with my back again, staring at a good sized room barely lit. A wooden desk close to the windows. A large chair behind it. Another two in the corner of the room. A sideboard. Nothing else, just space, a bit wasted, it crosses my mind, but I am not here to judge 17th century home decoration style.

 

Luckily the owner of the room isn’t in, and I sigh in relief, pushing my hat that is half a number too large for my head into a better position when I scan my surroundings.

First, I keep standing by the door waiting till my eyes get used to the dark, then I move forward, toward the desk. A glance to the windows tell me I was right; I can see the garden shimmer through the beautiful delicate artwork in the glass. It is better to be straight forward, open the window and hurry out, but it isn't that easy. I am here for a purpose.

I didn't get provided with a costume and got kicked out in the 17th century of France by the Tardis for nothing. There is a "job" to do which I am too new to, to fulfil it accurately.

 

Then something catches my attention. There on the desk lays paper which looks like official documents. Aside from it, a pen and an open ink jar. While leaning toward it, I suddenly note something hanging in the air — a sort of odour, with the mix of wax. A candle is burning, and there I note the other door  — and my mistake.

 

It's too late. Before I can decide what to do, I hear a person come out of the other room.

A few obscenities rattle through my mind, while decide to stay put like a deer in the headlight. If I don't move, no one will see me, right? Absurd.

 

We both haven't reckoned with another person in the room, so there is a second of heavy silence hanging in the air. The second doubles when I realise who's chamber I have entered.

 

It had been the plan. A plan the Tardis had told me to take care of. An idea I thought was insane. Everything was, but of course, there is no other way. I have to save the Doctor because if I don’t, no one will.

I am talking about the big plan, this here, me standing in front of this man, was the smaller plan. I thought I ruined it by using a wrong corridor. It comes to me that I have memorised the outline of the court bottom up, so the wrong way was actually the right way, and sometimes even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Cardinal Armand-Jean du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, short Cardinal Richelieu is a tall man, with an incredible presence, transfixing everyone who meets him.

 

My heart skips a beat, “Oh God…”

 

His eyes are filled with terror when he notices me, but he gets composure way quicker as I do. “Who are you! What are you doing in my chambers?”

 

Cardinal Richelieu is an intimidating person, besides being unarmed. He is dressed in all black with leather boots, black trousers and a shirt with loose laces by his chest. For a brief moment, I remember a picture in a history book, showing him with a red toga style of dressing, and assume he has taken it off for comfort. That or history books lie. I forget to answer  — not that I would have one.

 

“Who are you?” he repeats, and his eyes show the fury of a merciless man. I am already dead.

 

Acknowledging this I do the only thing I can — I start to make the best out of the situation, “I am… Well… What can I say?” I remember the door and how light it was to open. And I remember the soldiers not far away, so I quickly step back to one of the stools. “Listen, I know exactly what you will do, and I really would appreciate if you could not- “ I almost fall over my cloak, by stepping on it.

 

“Guards!” Richelieu yells and I throw him an annoying look, pushing the chair under the handle.

 

“Why did you do that?“ I ask in protest, pacing toward him.

 

I can see how his eyes dart to my sword, which I don’t intend to pull. I would end up getting entangled with my cloak and my feet, so far, I can imagine. That I don’t do it and reveal with those non-existing actions, that I have no idea what to do next confuses him more as it does me.

 

It's what happens all the time to me. Getting in trouble, don't know how I got in and let alone get out.

He is about to call again, and I finally remember that I also wear a pistol and that this is probably what makes him think that I am a threat. An assassin. Me? Oh, please!

 

“Ah!” I cheer while pulling the gun successfully out without letting it drop, and point it at him, not having expected it to be that heavy. I can hear the guards already hammer against the door. “Damn. Was this really necessary?” I pace around, only loosely pointing the weapon at him, trying to get up with a plan. “Is there a back door?”

 

This time it's him throwing me a look. As if he is going to tell me.

 

By now, he seems to have relaxed again, watching me pace up and down. I am not a thread; he has deciphered me the moment I came through the door; he is that clever. Assassin probably doesn't look like me.

 

“Who are you?” he turns, fierce spread across his face and it frightens me so much that I step back while checking the window. It's probably 1.5 meters down.

 

I laugh almost, “I'd have explained, but you had to call the guards,” then the door burst open, and two guards stand in the doorway holding guns also. This wasn't the plan at all!

 

“Damn!” I complain and step to the Cardinal embracing him; the gun pointed at his neck. The man is taller as I expected, and it turns out like an awkward dance figure because he is now my shield, but I can't see the soldiers at all mostly because my hat is just a pain in the arse.

 

“Don't shoot!” he orders his men, probably a smart idea taking into account how clumsy I am with the gun, and it gives me a bit of time. I finally have an idea of how to get out.

 

With one hand I rip my hat down to the floor and with that reveal my face in the dimmer getting light. Spotting my outgrown hair and my female features, the eyes of the Cardinal grew wide.

“You're a woman!” Even the guards are confused.

 

I look at him, “Yes, so? Oh, how about you two step out that door again?” it needs a press of the gun against Richelieu's chest, to at least make them exchange questioning looks. “Oh, come on, Cardinal, would you mind?”

 

The man in my grip, I am sure he could easily wrestle me down, but simply doesn’t want to risk anything, barks at his men, “Out!”

 

By now, so I guess, he doesn’t see me as the common thread he has to deal with usually. I am a woman, and I am slightly not what he expects from someone trying to murder him.  

 

The men do what he says, and I let go of him after the door is shut again. He watches me while I decide which window I want to escape through.

 

“What is this?” he asks.

 

I turn, quite not sure what it is myself, shrugging, “It wasn’t my intention to come here, I… I simply got lost, your grace.” I still hold the gun, and it is just impeccable heavy and therefore, “Would you mind?” I throw it over to him, and he lets it almost drop, before looking at me in sheer horror. That I have lost all my senses, giving him a gun, makes me more dangerous as anything — at least in his opinion. His look of confusion, horror, and questioning my sanity is priceless. “It’s not.. not loaded, just you know.”

 

“Not loaded?” he yelps and turns to the door, knowing his guards are waiting there. While I work around the damn window, that is either jammed or locked by a mechanism I don’t understand. I can feel how he considers the situation. “What’s with this window?” I groan in agony.

 

“It’s locked, of course!” he holds the gun as if it’s a baby, and is questioning himself, why he is telling me this.

 

I whirl around, “So no one can get out?”

 

“Usually, people try to get in,” he says with the tone of someone who has given up on his worst pupil.

 

“I got in,” I say.

 

“And I wonder how!” Now he comes back to senses and is fed up with me and my impudence, calling out for the guards again.

I am visibly unnerved and disappointed, “I knew you’d do that! And sorry about the window by the way. And … uhm… I lied.”

 

The guards storm in, their muskets at the ready, but as the Cardinal stands in their way, they don’t dare to shoot.

 

“Window? Lied? What?”

 

“I lied,” I point at the gun in his hand, “It is loaded.”

 

Before I can count to two, the Cardinal grabs the thing and points it at me firing. I foresaw it, and duck. The bullet bursts the window open with a loud bang. Richelieu throws his hands and gun into the air, noticing that he has played along with my plan, “Get her!”

 

But I am already on the sill, jumping out, not without giving him a grin, and then I land on the soft ground. The cloak and rapier I am wearing hinder me, all this leather and heaviness. I unclip and untangle some straps, and both come off in an instant. Swift, I come up and run as fast as I can across the garden. I am leaving a stunned and bewildered Cardinal Richelieu behind.

 

He tells his guards there is not much sense in following me.

  
  
  
  
  
  


 


	2. Intermission 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Giving everything more input and context.

The legend says; the Doctor is buried on Trenzelore. It’s a legend that plays against me because it’s true. It’s not a legend anymore.

 

I saw him die. Right in front of me, but I know what to do to make it right again. I carried his body into a cave, sealed with a stone like Jesus Christ - waiting for resurrection. An irony the Doctor would have surely liked.

 

It had been hard to leave Trenzelore, but the Tardis assured me that his non-regenerating body was safer there, no matter how often I asked. There was no other way —  not for me, not for anyone.

 

The Doctor had foreseen his death, scattering his persona right before it had happened, through different times on earth. Planting a seed in different men all having the same face.

 

When I first unriddled the messages from the Tardis toward me and grasped what the Doctor had done to save himself, I couldn’t believe it. The Tardis provided me with everything she knew. There had been a companion, Clara Oswald, who’d done the same, for another incarnation.

The Doctor did it almost the same, but he scattered himself not as new personas, but within actual living historical figures. His face, but not his character, only facets. The Tardis spared me the details — luckily. It saved me one or two headaches.

The bad thing was, it was just me left and no one else. Well, of course, the Tardis is there too. How I see it, she doesn’t believe in my capability. But I am all she has, and she is all I have.

 

That’s why we left the Doctor behind and began travelling earth up and down the time vortex to find all those men.

 

Ridiculous.

 

It’s not as easy as it sounds. The Tardis needs to calculate all those men, their place in time and the right moment. The calculations sometimes take only hours, sometimes days, a time in which I am doomed to wait, wandering the Tardis. It’s like a vast playground, without anyone but me. After two days, it gets depressing.

I spent two weeks talking to myself because the Tardis doesn’t “speak” to me that way. Only humming, wheezing and flickers of light and of course the monitors. Sometimes not even that.

 

The first man we sought out was more a young lad, Danny, a bit confused when I told him what I needed from him — a small sample of his blood.

When I faced him for the first time, looking into the familiar very young face of a man I didn’t know, I struggled to form a greeting. That face! How was it even possible?

 

At the end of that adventure, when I watched the young man walk away, something told me, I would quickly get used to the experience of finding the same face over and over again.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not sure if I will make more of those "intermissions", for the beginning, I think it is necessary to give you guys some input without throwing it at you as some sort of infodump in my Notes.


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Tardis needs you to go back to Cardinal Richelieu. So you return, in the middle of the night.

Three days later, I find myself again on the grounds of the Parisian court, from where I had flown from Cardinal Richelieu and his guards. The Tardis had no compassion with me, calculating another approach without asking. All this work we have to do, she wants to get over with, no matter the consequences for me.  

 

It’s the middle of the night, and while I wait for a guard to pass, I don’t know why the Tardis chose that night to come back, as it is slowly starting to rain and I assume within a short time it will rain cats and dogs. Also, I can guess precisely why she chose that night and not any other. I failed her, and this is my punishment — sort of. 

My simply woollen coat doesn’t give much cover, so I need to be quick when I don’t want to be soaked to the bones. Pacing over the grass, I stop in front of the spot where the Cardinals workplace is. When I am not mistaken, it’s three windows more to the right, and those windows I see should be his bedroom. 

If I am wrong, I might knock a guard out of sleep and get shot. Or arrested and then hanged. So this might be better the correct window. 

‘What am I doing here?’ I look up the one and a half meter high wall to the window, deciding it makes no sense question my doings, and go to work. It’s not an impossible height, but still, I struggle to find the right spot for my left foot. While the rain starts to get heavier, I peak toward the opaque glass, only seeing darkness. Nothing can be heard, beside the rain and me — in my ears making the most possible sound by scratching with my foot against the stone wall. The sounds probably get washed away by the harsh rain.

 

“Christ!” it slips me, tugging at my coat which has soaked up the rain being heavy now. I thought cloaks and swords and all that stuff is cool, but wearing it, is just a pain I’ve figured by now. 

The Tardis hadn’t provided me with another set of sword and cloak, so I took what I could find. An old woollen coat with holes and a pistol. It is probably better that way. The certainty I have to flee once more is given and getting rid of heavy gear would cost me precious seconds I might not have. 

 

Taking a deep breath, I start to knock against the glass gently, waiting. Even this is Richelieu’s bedroom; he maybe won’t react or call his guards. 

Solution; hanging, death, torture. Spanish Inquisition no one expects in France. Well, I have more significant problems, so I knock again, and this time someone lights a candle inside. Then for a long while nothing happens and I dare to knock once more.

The rain is now going hard against my back, and I feel the cloak is about to tear me down. 

 

What is taking him so long? I knock with more vigour, using my flat hand. I figure if it would be a guard he’d open up already. 

 

My loud knocking finally brings about an effect, as I can see a figure come closer and before I can get too happy about it, the window gets ripped open. 

A dagger held in front of me and a slightly sleepy looking Cardinal Richelieu glaring down at me, “You!”

 

Giving him a smirk, looking at the dagger in front of my nose for a moment, “I’d raise my hands, but then I’ll fall.”

 

For a moment he is unsure what to do. Does he see a danger in me? And if so, in case I am an assassin, could he handle me himself? By all means, I have proven by now I am not the best of that specific craftsmanship. “I can’t tell if you are just foolish to come back here or…”

 

“Very clever?” I suggest.

 

He lowers the dagger and gives me a chuffed laugh, “I wouldn’t go there.”

 

“Listen, your Eminence, we can have this talk here by the window, or you let me get in because it’s raining and I am soaking.”

 

Another huff, another short moment of evaluating his plans and then to my and probably to his surprise, he steps back. So I start to climb up, but the pistol I wear is hindering me, so I reach for it and place it on the large sill. When Richelieu sees it, he steps back, about to call out. 

 

“No!” I hiss and shove the gun away half inside.

 

The Cardinal reaches quickly for it, holding it against me.

 

“What? Are you going to shoot me?” I ask blunt, looking up to him.

 

“If I have to,” he answers strictly. The tone makes me stop climbing. How can a man in a nightgown be so threatening?

 

“It’s not loaded,” I answer still half hanging in the window, afraid to move.

 

“Like three days ago?” he asks. “I fought in battle; I know when a gun is loaded or not.”

 

A few seconds go by, and I consider the idea I had hours ago to come back to him, as a mistake. “Well,” I venture, “then you know it isn’t loaded.”

 

The truth is, I have no clue if the pistol is loaded or not because the Tardis just provided it and I took it without thinking. The other fact is that Richelieu was indeed a soldier and probably knows if a pistol is loaded or not. 

 

The rain is easing away for the moment, what doesn’t matter anymore as I am completely wet, “Can I make a proposition?”

 

“When I say no, would that stop you?”

This time it’s me giving a chuffed laugh, “Look at me! I mean, I can’t even climb inside the damn building. Do you honestly think I am such a threat?” the cloak is soaked and hangs at my shoulders like a heavy child. I am feeling my hands slip off the sill, “Please?”

 

My plea helps. The Cardinal is way too curious, and places the gun aside, reaching for my hand, and helps me inside. Not too much of course, just a firm pull and I land sprawled out with much noise in front of him and his bed.

 

Muttering a thank you, I come back to my feet. I leave a puddle where I stand, water dripping down my face, my hands, my everything onto the tiled floor. 

Glancing first at the puddle then at him, I give the awkward situation a soft shrug. Richelieu is still pointing the pistol at me. No more with verve, but still not convinced I am not a threat. Who can blame him? 

His private room is quite roomy and has a bit more belongings in it as his study, which is mainly just a desk and a chair: a double bed, a large desk, some chairs, a cupboard. 

Across the windows is a fireplace, a dim fire crackling, and because the weather got to me, I walk over and hold my hands toward the dying flame. 

 

“May I?” I point to the small stack of wood.

 

He grants it with a gesture, and I stack some wood into the fire. Soon the flames go strong and not only warm my cold hands. Freeing myself from the cloak, I drape it over a stool nearby. Then there, my glance falls onto my gear. I had to leave behind three days ago in the corner of the room. “You kept it. So very nice of you.”

 

Richelieu decides it makes no sense in pointing with a gun at me all the time and places it on his bed, before coming closer. He reaches for a deep dark red nightgown that hangs by the bed to tuck himself in. Cardinal worthy and it makes me smile.

 

“I didn’t keep it to give it back, more to find out about its owner,” he explains. 

 

It gives me another chance to smirk because I know where it is from, and it will lead to no source. I take off my hat, my hair wet. The Cardinal looks at me with wide eyes. He isn’t used to the fact that women wear men’s clothes. I assume he has ladies visits in here from time to time, with vast and beautiful gowns. Lovely mistresses with long fair hair, probably a little younger as I am. A mix of exotic, and very innocent maybe? Who can tell with this man? 

 

My history background on him is not bad but limited. I had asked the Tardis to provide me with information, and she did. It made me shut up for three days, the time she needed for another calculation, and it also made me busy till I fell asleep in the library. It won’t be my last overnighter, when I want to know more, I know that already. There is so much to learn about this age and particularly about Cardinal Richelieu. Armand. Duke of Richelieu. 

Christ, I also need such a title!

 

When I turn my attention back to him, I can see how he had observed me following my strings of thoughts. Swallowing, I feel how I blush.

 

The past days have been exhausting. The loss of the Doctor and the discovery of his possible resurrection have gotten to me and my physical strength. I battle with headaches here and there, and I feel another uprising.

 

“So?” I ask. “What next? Interrogation?” I haven’t been that straight forward from the start; it was something I had to learn on my travels with the Doctor. Now I am without him, I developed a strategy by doubling my sass, and my naive belief that I better be bold than sorry. I never cease to make me surprise myself, and I can see the way one eyebrow arches that I make Richelieu wonder also.

 

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” he steps a little closer, frowning at me.

 

“I’m just no one, actually,” because what am I, without my Doctor?

 

“No one?” he repeats sarky. “No one doesn’t just break into the palace, walks around the court unnoticed by good guards, and is even able to get to me,” Richelieu explains, and I believe there is a hint of appreciation. “And then this no one comes back. Again, unseen, unnoticed. You might act like a lax fool, but fools usually don’t get that far,” he points in front of himself.

 

He does not want to hear a name; I am that clever. I know what this is about, “I was lucky.”

 

I had the Tardis and a watch this time, showing me the way, I decided to keep in my pocket so no one will burn me as a witch.

 

“I don’t think so.”

 

“I am not an assassin, your Grace,” I turn away from the fire toward him. I am presenting myself. No more weapons, just some ragged up clothes the Tardis gave me after I told her I couldn’t go in this slightly fluffy gown she wanted me to wear first. I look like a peasant.

 

“You look like a peasant,” the Cardinal reads my thoughts, and for a second I consider that he can. I lack knowledge but know I shouldn’t underestimate this man. “But you don’t smell like one.”

 

Ah, clever boy. The smell it is. People in this century have no clue about hygiene, let alone the possibilities. They wash merely once a week, and the everyday people stink like hell. I noticed that as one of the first things. As higher the class goes, the lesser the smell. The Cardinal doesn’t smell, no he has some subtle odour at him, so far I noticed. And he noticed mine. I don’t fit in, of course, I don’t, and he is intelligent enough to make connections between vacuous trifles.

 

“What does that make me?” I ask, trying to put myself into his place. Something impossible to achieve for me, but at least I try, and I can see he sees that I do, and lets me speak on, “A good smelling … spy?”

 

“For an assassin, you seem a bit too loud, too untrained — you don’t suit,” he thinks aloud. “Also, you had your chances. I’ve met assassins, coming that close, they would have made their move. So either you are a very untalented assassin,” I bow mockingly at the words, and it raises a smile from him, “or you aren’t one. A spy then!”

 

His words sound way too final, and that he walks back to the pistol to take it up again, is telling me there is a good chance I face my execution before dawn.

 

In my desperation, I make a step toward him, “I am not a spy!”

 

It only makes him jerk the gun toward me. His face is like stone; harsh and grim, and I can even understand him. 

What else shall I be? A foreigner, falling through his door, armed like wanting to apply at the musketeer’s corps. A quick mouth here and there, but not able to handle a cloak. What else should I be in these days of France, 1600 something? God; I can’t even remember the year at this moment. I am a shame. For the Tardis, for Richelieu and the Doctor.

 

“I’ve heard those words before!” he hisses.

 

Between him and me lay two meters, maybe three. The light is dim, but he could pull the trigger and hit me where it will hurt or where it will kill me. The Cardinal has killed before, I am sure, even now he has his henchmen doing the dirty work for him. My heart is pacing. Still, I wonder why he isn’t doing it. Is the gun indeed empty? Or is it something else?

 

Because of his hesitation, I do what I’ve learned from the Doctor; I play for time, making things up, while I go, “You haven’t pulled the trigger. Why is that, your Eminence?”

 

He flashes me his teeth, “I’ve seen spies, but they usually not come in the middle of the night to my bedroom,” he can read my thoughts, while I go through all the cliche afflicted movies I know, “at least not in this attire.”

 

I look down at me, reminding myself to tell the Tardis what her dress would have done to me. I make a further gesture with my hand, “So?”

 

“Again, who are you, what do you want? And don’t tell me you came back to get back your gear,” he points at the sword and cloak. It was the exact excuse I wanted to use.

 

“I fear, Cardinal,” I begin, hovering a bit with my words, “You won’t believe me when I tell.”

 

He’ll burn me like a witch; he’ll title me insane, that’s why I can’t come clean. On the other hand, I need him. I need to be close to him. Need his blood sample, or the Doctor has to pay the price and the Tardis will make me pay too. Kick me out in prehistoric times maybe. Or the dark ages. She can do that, I know. She will!

 

“Try me!” he pushes. 

I am not able to speak on, as there is a sound outside. We both turn to another window. It’s not the wind nor rain. Pacing over, I can see a shadow meddle with the window.

 

“Intruder,” I whisper, and point at the Cardinal’s bed. For a reason I don’t know, we both share the same opinion it wouldn’t do good to call the guards. The intruder would be scared away, and to let him in, is the only chance to get him. And when there is someone who wants to take a chance to find something out about his enemies, it’s Richelieu.

 

The Cardinal blows out the candle and then climbs back into his bed, the pistol in his grip, hiding it under the blanket. I hurry into one particularly dark corner, shielding there. 

 

It doesn’t take long, and then the shadow has cracked the window almost silently open, climbing without a sound into the room. 

‘This is how you do it!’ I think not being the master of my thoughts.

 

I watch the Cardinal, who lays in his bed, even convincing me he is asleep, and I am sure, if I hadn’t come before, he would be sleeping in that very moment. 

 

The possible assassin makes no sound, and in the light of the fire, I can see the blade of a dagger flash. Whoever this is, now lingers over the Cardinal, and I almost forget to breathe, but then I hear the rustling of the gun and words of the Cardinal when pointing the gun at his attacker, “Drop the dagger!”

 

Before there can happen anything more, it is me who paces across the room, heaving the chamberstick I grab from the desk over the person’s head. Being no one for violence, I close my eyes while hitting as hard as I can. I’ve learned in a short matter of time, that the times am visiting at the moment are harsh and when I don’t hit hard enough the man will either kill Richelieu, me or Richelieu will pull the trigger —  with a gun, that is maybe not loaded. 

 

While the body sacks down, I wonder what the Doctor would say? Did I interrupt history natural happening? It can’t be, I know that the Cardinal has died on a cold day in December. It’s not December, so. 

 

Then this story the Doctor once told me is pushing into my head. It had been a dull evening when he suddenly had asked, “Who wrote Beethoven’s fifth?”

 

Both, the Cardinal and I watch the body hit the ground and then lock eyes. As strange at it is, I await orders from this man, and he is giving them, “Light the candle again and get me a cord.”

 

Doing as told, he is pushing the body onto his back. It’s a man, looking like a real ruffian. That’s how assassins look like, I almost about to tell the Cardinal but keep quiet.

 

“Do you ... know him?” I ask a bit shaken. The Cardinal glances up at me, his mimic softens for a moment, realising my fright. It’s probably the first time I act like he is used to by a woman in his time. 

 

He takes the cord from me; his expression hardens again, “No. I’ll let him get interrogated. I’ve names before the day strikes noon.”

 

The way he says it makes me step back — the French Inquisition. Armand-Jean du Plessis, Premier Duc de Richelieu. Such an impossibly long name and a title that I was sure I’d forget, but now I stand here looking down at the most feared man of his time, wearing a dark nightgown, having it syllable by syllable in my mind. My shudder and fear must show visibly, because he raises looking long at me as if it matters what I think of him, or at least he does not want me to feel fear in his presence. 

 

Our eyes meet. “I better go,” I announce quickly because I see no reason to stay any longer. Stepping back to my gear, Richelieu makes no intention to stop me. We both know he has to call the guards and to explain my being here is maybe not fitting into his plans. On the other hand, he is the Cardinal, he can have whoever he likes in his rooms, but it is complicated enough, so I just get dressed. 

 

Without looking at him, I pick up the sword and the belt, fiddling both around my waist. It is only the second time I put it on. The first time I needed fifteen minutes to get it right, the Tardis wheezing mocking sounds. The only trouble I have this time is my cloak and the many buttons. I’d wear it bound around my armpit, but the rain is still going, and I need a bit of cover. Buttons, so many buttons to be closed and my hands shake. Why do they?

 

I look up, meeting Richelieu’s eyes. There I notice, they are not merciless, no, those are the eyes of the Doctor. My Doctor. 

 

While I fiddle with the last button, I never look at the Cardinal, and he never says something, but when I look up, he holds my hat in hand, holding it out to me. Kind eyes. It’s a weird moment where I feel close to him. It only lasts a second then the delinquent makes a moaning noise, about to wake up. Quickly I take the hat and nod.

 

“You come back,” Richelieu says because our business is not done yet. He doesn’t know about anything, but he knows I have my reasons to come to him, and that they seem good enough to risk my life for it. 

 

“I have to,” I answer and walk to the window.

 

“Wait,” he walks over to the desk in the room and grabs a piece of paper, holding it then out to me. 

 

“What’s this?” I look at it — old paper with a wax signature. 

 

“The front door entrance,” he explains, “In the evening is best.”

 

Putting the paper away, I jump out the window without falling or getting tangled up with my gear. In the distance, I hear the Cardinal call for his guards. Quickly the court and his private Palais are in an uproar. 

I am long gone, the Tardis stands not far from here. I have to expect a bollocking in the form of prolonged wheezing, I assume.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoy so far what you read, grasping the concept of the story. I can promise another chapter will give you even more insight into how I want this story to happen and how the relationship of the Companion and the Cardinal will play out in the future. 
> 
> Let me know what you think! Love to read comments.


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Tardis isn't happy about your failure, but there are enough other "faces" that need to be visited, giving you the chance to make it up to her again. And then you need to return to Cardinal Richelieu, but by now you know nothing is ever easy with the Cardinal. Your visit will turn out way different as you have expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We now go deeper into the story and the relationship between the Companion and the Cardinal, but also the relationship the Companion has with the Doctor and the Tardis.

The Tardis isn’t pleased with my failing success, but what can she do except humming angrily at me?   
We keep moving on, forget about the failures, and the next we have is 83 AD. Somewhere in Italy. A couple of years after ‘Volcano Day’. 

After I manage to put around a toga, I quickly find the man I am looking for. Caecilius is his name, and after I get over another shock, and the face of my Doctor, I gain his trust quickly. Telling him about the Doctor earns me an invitation into his home quicker as I’ve expected. I get wine and food as much as I want. He shows me the gods of the house, and I recognise them as a former incarnation of the Doctor and his past Companion Donna Noble.   
The Tardis was kind enough to brief me about Caecilius. So it was relatively easy when I told him the Doctor needed his help, and besides being sceptical, he gave me a blood sample without hesitation.   
After listening to the story of the Doctor saving him and his family, I make my goodbyes and return to the Tardis. 

I have barely time to change when she announces her next stop with a deep bang. Quickly I get we are back in France. It will be the game from now on. France. Somewhere else. France again, till I manage to get the blood sample from the Cardinal. 

A little later, I will use that knowledge to my advantage. 

For now, I throw over my cloak again. By now, I know how to handle the heavy leather coat with the many buttons, finding some strange enjoyment and a bit of excitement swirling through my body, knowing I would revisit the Cardinal.  
When I step out, I notice we are not at the same spot as we have been before, and it is colder as before. Way colder, but to my displease the Tardis closes her door and doesn’t let me get back in to get another jacket.   
This relationship between her and me is paved with little teasings, misunderstandings and a few vanities — on both sides. It’s complicated; I accept that. 

With a huff, I look around, trying to figure out where I am. Soon I notice a young boy near a house and a couple of horses. 

“Hey, tell me the way to the king’s palace!” 

He looks at me, frowning, “This way, it’s about five kilometres.”

“Five?” I turn back to the Tardis. So that’s what you get when being a good companion, but she would have made it ten in case I hadn’t been successful with Caecilius, so I accept it. 

“What’s that?” the boy asks me while I watch the horses, an idea hitting my head.

“My box,” I reach for the small leather bag, that is filled with money, “Who owns those horses?”

“My master,” he explains, and I fish for some money. 

“Will this be enough to rent one?” I am unfamiliar with the money I carry, guessing it is the face of Luis XIV pressed into the coins. 

“Rent?” the boy gleams at the money. “You can have them all!”

It makes me laugh, “One is enough, just give me one, that is nice to me.” I am not good at riding. The last time I was sitting on a horse was a few years ago, but I am not keen on walking. Let alone in the cold.   
Luckily the boy doesn’t ask questions and decides for a brown horse. It seems quite calm, and I hope it will do its job without biting me. I also ask him for another coat to keep me warm and some leather gloves. The kid provides me with everything, and I grant him another coin that quickly vanishes into his pockets. 

When I sit on the horse, I feel like my heart is going to burst outside my chest. Excitement has turned into nervousness. A soft fear, but there is no room for fear. It’s an emotion I don’t have the luxury of having.   
I tell the boy to watch my box, push my heels softly into the stomach of the horse, “to the palace, please,” I say with a laugh, and that’s what it does. 

Through narrow streets, which stink abominably, the horse brings me without any delay to the palace. It’s afternoon, and I remember Richelieu’s advice to come in the evening. As it is cold, I don’t want to wait and hope he will see me. 

When I get close to the entrance, I fish nervously for the piece of paper he has given me. It is still where I put it when I had left. 

The guards notice me already from afar. Having read about the red guards, I decide it’s better to walk the last hundred meters. The soldiers look grim, and I imagine it also has something to do with the fact that I wear a blue cloak. The Musketeers and the Red Guards stood in constant competition with each other, so far, I remember. 

“Halt!” one of the men, one hand already at his sword, comes closer. “You are trespassing.”

Unsure what to do, I freeze till the soldier repeats his warning angrily. It’s his unjustified anger that makes me not yield but raise my chin, holding out the “entrance card” I’d been given, “I am here to ask Cardinal Richelieu to see me.”

A moment of hesitation and silence on both sides passes. There is a chance he considers me a trickster; I wouldn’t be the first or last. What happens to tricksters at the court we can all imagine. With emphasis, I stretch my arm as far away from me toward him, and finally, he glances at the paper — noticing the red wax seal. 

Without asking, he rips the paper out of my hand, holding it against the sunlight. Another eternity goes by; then he seems convinced the document is real. He orders another guard to take care of my horse before motioning me to follow him. 

It’s a long walk through the gates and the inner of the court toward Richelieu’s private Palais. Trembling all the time I feel how the cold has gotten to me by now. I am used to central heating, soft shell clothes and winter boots and not this. For a second I consider to call it a day, turn around and go back home. 

Home? There is no home; there never will be a home again when I fail! I can’t help myself and stop by a massive column, using its support while I become aware that I might never see my time again. There is this movie I wanted to see next week, I joked about it after a couple of days, when the Doctor had taken me as his Companion. He promised me to take me at some point, giving me a speech about time and space and tea that never gets cold. There was never a reason to not believe in his words. 

“You are alright?” the words of the soldier rip me out of my dark thoughts. 

“Yes,” a puff of air escapes my mouth. It forms a small cloud reminding me of the cold and reminding me that I haven’t wondered till now how much time must have past since I’ve been here the last time.   
Quietly I follow again, but inside panic is about to rise. What if the Tardis has misjudged the time frame completely? 

‘Oh, god!’ a headache is about to form.

Luckily I don’t have time to bath in my panic, as we seem to have reached our destination. There is a door that looks like the one I know already, but it is only for another passage, guarded by two other guards, that lead to the corridor I did take accidentally the first time I was here.

“You wait here,” the red guard tells me before he vanishes behind the door, and while I wait nervously the other two never let me out of sight.   
Aside we are inside a building by now; I keep trembling. The waiting makes it even worse, and I tell myself it would have been easier to break in through the garden once again. 

Then, finally, the soldier returns, “He is seeing you now.”

He points at the door he has left before, and I walk through. Another long corridor follows, and I go the way the soldiers stand. Two entries later, I reach the familiar wooden one I remember. 

I knock and hear an invitation quickly from inside. For a second, I hesitate. What the hell was the movie again I wanted to see so desperately?

Richelieu calls again, impatiently and I push the door open. 

The room seems to have expanded, but it is only a trick of my tired mind. As I have never visited the Cardinal as the ordinary people do, I find myself lost for guidelines of how to behave. Do I bow? Or is it courtesy I have to go for? Do I only speak when he speaks first? 

It’s an awkward silence, me standing at the door, doing nothing at all because I lack the strength.   
The Cardinal is sitting at his desk, looking at me as if I am a ghost he not thought to see again. It must be eternities, I fear, and suddenly I tremble like a leaf in the wind. It’s not only the cold, but it’s also nervousness and agitation. Richelieu notices and snaps into action, jumping out of his chair, pacing toward me, “You are cold! And it is not even Decembre.”

“No?” I look around, and he motions me toward the fire at the end of the room. “What is it then?”

“End of Octobre,” he looks wary. 

A gasp escapes me, “Oh.”

“You were here last three months ago,” he tries to conclude what has happened in my life in the last three months, which are only a few days for me. “Did you forget time?”

“Yes!” I answer harsher as I wanted. In my mind I add a whole monologue like; ‘Well, you know I was in 83 AD, and met this guy called Caecilius, who got away from Volcano Day in Pompeii. He looks exactly like you, by the way, and I haven’t slept any proper for the last 24 hours because there is this box, a time machine, thinking I can catch up with cat naps!’

He would have reminded everyone else, who he was, and who they were. And for a moment he wants to do that to me. I can hear it the way he inhales the air, sharp and annoyed.   
Awaiting the first minister anger, I bow my head slightly before he can open his mouth and maybe this is enough for him — I can’t tell. 

He doesn’t say a word about my respectless behaviour; “I didn’t think you show up again.”   
His words make me raise my head, tilting it toward him in surprise, considering him.   
It didn’t sound welcoming. Also, the way he gazes into the fire is betraying something I might only notice because I know that face better as anyone in this time. I can’t place a finger on it, so I let my eyes travel over his appearance. He wears his black leather attire and a cloak, bound around his shoulders. It’s nothing one would wear inside the warm room. I figure he was on his way it seems. To mass maybe, or some political conference with the king? Cardinal Richelieu isn’t a man who waits for anybody, except the king. Can it be that he has awaited me, all those weeks? A stranger who he does not even know a name off?

“I said I would,” my hand lands on my sword. The fire has warmed me again, “I am delaying you?”

He appreciates my deduction with a small smirk, “Yes, I am already late for the king. I have to go to court. I expect you to stay,” it is not a question, nor a plea. It’s an order, and I bow to it. 

It seems to please the Cardinal, so I try to remember that I shall bow more often from now on. Without another word, he leaves me behind, and I can only guess how long this will take or what I shall do to bridge the time. 

When the door has fallen shut, I turn around a couple of times in hope to find out what to do next, and once more only because my cloak is swoosh so nicely. 

The room is still empty. A desk. A chair and a bookshelf behind it. There is not even a second chair! Where did it go? It dawns on me, why he had them removed.  
I end up in the chair of the Cardinal starring at some documents I wouldn’t be able to read when the Tardis wouldn’t translate them for me. Letters that will soon go out to Spain, Sweden and ministers in France.   
Hours pass and because I don’t know how to help myself I sit in front of the fire ending up to lay on the cloak the boy at the farmhouse has given me as a pillow and fall asleep because I am dead tired. 

Time passes in which I sleep unbothered by the hard floor till the tip of a boot gently shakes me awake. Startling awake I realise first, that it is dark outside before I see Richelieu towering over me. Irritated I look around. The fire is still burning, and at his desk, a candle is lit. “How long have I slept?” 

“I can’t tell,” he answers. “I only know I came in here two hours ago to do some paperwork.” 

“What?” the situation feels absurd. 

“You seemed happy asleep, so I just left you,” I can see him smirk down at me. “So come on.” 

My back is aching, so with a groan, I come back to my feet. Noticing I did fall asleep with all my gear on, I realise how tired I’ve just been. That’s why I am grateful that he did let me sleep. On the other hand, I also feel like a creature he owns for his amusement, letting it rest in front of the fireplace as long as he has a purpose for it. “Where are we going?” 

“To my private chambers,” he points at a door, I wasn’t brave enough to enter, “I think you are familiar with them.” 

On the table in his bedroom stands a plate with bread, cheese, meat, water and wine. A servant must have brought it, and I would have loved to see the face of him seeing me in front of the fire sleeping. Admittingly I feel also embarrassed. 

There is a fire also burning, and because the room is smaller, it is warmer as I expected. Richelieu points at the food and takes off his heavy leather jacket revealing a black shirt. I can see him grip his head. Headaches. 

Encouraged by his doings, I take off my gear and cloak. The grey shirt I wear fits the time, but it’s just too big on me, or maybe that was the fashion back then, I can’t tell. 

Waiting for him at the table, he comes over and grabs a glass to fill it with water. For a moment, he winces. 

“You have headaches,” I say and go to my bag, I have put down with the rest of my stuff. 

“Yes,” he watches with a frown. 

As I have headaches myself, I never leave the Tardis without a patch of Ibuprofen. It’s maybe a bit risky to show Richelieu the plastic patch, but I figure he won’t care anymore when his headache is gone. Breaking two pills out of the foil, I hold one out to him. 

He doesn’t take it, “Poison!”

It makes me almost laugh, so absurd it is for me “Poison? You let me sleep in your rooms, give me an entrance ticket, ask me to dine with you and still think I will poison you? Please! “

He doesn’t react to it, and I understand that I never will be able to put myself in his place. For a second, I lose my countenance, “I am not here to kill you, Armand!” 

The way his glaring eyes twitch from my hand to my face makes me aware of my plain mistake, “Cardinal, Eminence…y-your Grace,” I bow my head — it will help. 

Then I take the two pills unnerved and break them in half. I mix them so every one of us will have the same amount of poison and place one in front of him and the other I gulp down with the glass of water he had prepared earlier. 

“No poison, it will help against the headache,” I motion him to take them. “Give them fifteen minutes, and you’ll feel better.” 

After another minute of consideration, I have long gone to start eating because what is it actually with all the waiting and considering, he takes the pills. 

Then he joins me, “What is it I took then?”

Carelessly I answer, “Magic.” 

He jumps up as if been bitten by a snake, “Witchcraft!”

I jump up too, “No, no, no! It’s… I’m not... Herbals! It’s herbals! Just a good mix of herbals. That’s all. I am sorry, I was making a joke.”

“Jokes about witchcraft are not well taken at the Palace,” he reminds me, pointing a finger at me. 

“Forgive me,” I sigh, quickly shoving a piece of cheese into my mouth. When it is full, I can’t talk nonsense. 

The next question I anticipate by the way he looks at me. I am the prey and he the predator. His hand has reached for the cheese knife a bit ago, fiddling with it. He barely eats. 

“A name,” the tip of the knife is pointing at me. 

“A name, uhm,” I tell him my first name and add on a whim of madness, “Countess of Gallifrey.” 

“Gallifrey?” he repeats like spitting on it. “Where is that supposed to be?” 

“Ireland,” I answer without missing a beat. 

It makes him chuckle, “Ireland. By all due respect… Countess, but you sound as Irish as the pope is sticking to the commandment of chastity.”

“What a devoted man, then,” I lean back in my stool, giving him a fake smile. ‘When you knew how Scottish you sound to me, you probably execute yourself,’ I think highly amused. 

They all have the same voice: the same Scottish brogue, some more some less but always Scottish. The Cardinal has a very alluring resonating R. 

I expect him to go on in his inquiry, but he says nothing more, simply watches me, while putting a couple of grapes into his mouth one after another. His gaze never leaving me spurring on my heart. It makes my cheeks blush and makes my thoughts lose any sense. It’s attention I am not used to, let alone from someone like him. I better don’t waste too much thought about his persona in history. This man has crafted France over the decades; his name will be known for centuries long after he has died.   
I can be lucky when a couple of old friends will remember me till their death, and then history will be done with me. That’s how different we are. 

Richelieu puts another grape into his mouth, and besides feeling a shudder go through me, I am not able to look away. Long skilled fingers, taken care of, shoving the small green fruit through his thin lips.   
He is thin, the hollow of his cheeks betray it. Owed the stress and the demands of being the first minister, an assignment he took on only a year ago. His hair shows the first sign of grey hair, a mix of black and grey curls. It’s not like I don’t know all the features this man inherits. 

In the young past, I spent time watching the Doctor while doing as if I would read a book. Observing every feature, every wrinkle, every curl, because I’ve never met such a fascinating man before. Like the Doctor, the Cardinal is able to communicate all through his eyes and brows. Somewhere I read when he was born, and when would die, but holding his stare is making me forget not only those two facts. He smirks softly, I can see it the way little wrinkles build up around his eyes, and it comes to me, that he looks good. Attractive even. 

That’s the moment I look away. Attractive. I’ve never had that thought with the Doctor. The Doctor is my friend, and we use to banter like an old married couple sometimes, but I’ve never had the idea of him being attractive. He was just fascinating to me. 

When I look back to the Cardinal, I can see that he is no more looking at me. Instead, he seems like something is happening to him. I need a moment to realise that the painkillers have kicked in. When he has processed that his head isn’t about to explode anymore, he looks at me again with wide eyes, his eyebrows unsure what to do.

I lean slightly forward, a smile on my lips, “I told you; I am not going to poison you.”

“Witchcraft,” it escapes him in a whisper. He probably has never been that pain-free in such a short time. 

“Oh, but Cardinal, did no one ever tell you it’s better not to talk about this at court?” I am back with the sass. 

As an answer, he is flashing me his teeth, before standing up to walk around me, toward his bed.   
“And now!” he reaches for the bedside, pulling out a rapier that hangs there. I hadn’t noticed because why? He points it at me, “You are going to tell me everything I want to know!”

This man is not making a joke! I jump up, almost falling backwards with the chair while Richelieu approaches me. There is not much way I can go, and quickly I find myself leaning against the wall by the window the blade of his presented toward my throat.

“What is wrong with you?” How could his mood change so suddenly? He never gets painkillers from me again!

“That’s what I want to know from you!” the blade is almost touching me. “I’m asking one last time; who are you? What is your desire?”

 

The blade is now right at my jugular vein. One insecure move and I’ll bleed out like … like a creature, “I fear you’ll kill me when I tell you.” 

“I’ll kill you when you don’t answer,” a thought is flashing up, and he lowers the blade. “I won’t be unfair, get your sword.”

Sparing him and me a “why” I go quickly for it, holding it up then. I have no clue how to fence, “I don’t understand.”

“If I win, you are going to tell me everything,” he touches my blade with slight verve making the steel clink loud. I am so nervous I almost drop my weapon. 

“If I win?” I ask, balancing slightly backwards. 

 

“You won’t,” is all he says before stepping forward, swinging the sword down at me. 

My defence is due to a good reflex and a basic survival instinct. Blow after blow goes down at me, and blow after blow I can parry off. The Cardinal puts experience into it, but not much force. It would have been an easy task to hurt or kill me with the first blow. In the end, I stumble and land on my bottom, his blade placed where my heart beats.

“You have absolutely no clue of how to fence,” he notes, looking down at me. He doesn’t need an answer. “Up! Get up!”

I do as ordered, getting pressed against the wall, the blade once more against my throat. He is a tall man, and I am not that small, but now with his weight against mine, looking down at me, I feel very small. 

“Out with the truth, I am tired of your silence!”

What would someone else do in my position, I wonder. At the same moment, I see myself telling the Tardis that she could at least appreciate my efforts. Then again, it seems I will not get that far. 

“I am the Companion of a man named the Doctor! He is in deep trouble, and I need you to get him out of it!” I cry out, losing all my resolutions. “Without you, I can’t do this. I beg off you, don’t kill me! I beg of you, Armand!”

Using his first name again, makes him loosen his grip, and I wonder if he grasps what I said. I spared him the more profound truth, afraid of him calling witchcraft again. Tortue. Stake. He’d send me to the gallows!

Next, I expect him to wonder who this Doctor is, but he keeps staring down quietly at me. It’s the same way I have stared at him before while eating, with a curious interest, and something more.   
Suddenly; devilish fire in his eyes, a gaze, a lust. 

I let my rapier drop to the ground, and my hands raise, going slowly toward his chest. His breath is now going faster, his sword still touching my shoulder, but I’ve lost fear he’ll hurt me. Curiously his eyes follow my hands, while my eyes never leave his face. 

First, I feel the cotton of his shirt, then the warmth of his body and finally his chest. Something happens with me when I finally touch him, like a spark, it is going through me and also through him. He throws his weapon away but doesn’t move away from me. Instead, his free hand grabs for my shoulder. His eyes twitch to my lips, and I do the same. 

Suddenly I am allured by his presence and can feel how I want to give in. How I want to kiss this man, and how he wants to kiss me.   
Nevertheless, there is something that holds us both on our spot, two inches apart. And it’s not the fact, I told him about the Doctor. I don’t know what it is for him, but for me, it is the fact that I am not Countess of Gallifrey. I am the Companion of the Doctor, no one will ever remember me, and in case I’ll be able to bring the Doctor back, he is going to kill me for meddling with time when he finds out about it. 

Sheer panic is washing over me, and my hands grab the fabric of Armands shirt, but instead of pulling him in, I push him aside with all the force that is left in me, “I am sorry. I better go.”

He lets me slip out of his grip, but he is not letting me go. One hand comes around my wrist, holding me tight, but not rough.   
I look down at his long fingers around my arm. Why is this getting complicated? 

When they all be that complicated, I’ll quit! Doctor, sorry, but I didn’t sign up for this! 

I want to get away, it is better for all of us, but my hand speaks another language. It comes around his wrist; we’re holding each other now. Oh Lord, help me. I am about to meddle with time.

Then he tugs at my arm, and I give in, stepping closer, letting him pull me into his arms. His hands are now touching my face and observing it, mapping it out. I shudder over the touch, that feels soft and warm. I am intoxicated, and he knows, he reads it in my eyes. 

“I’d find it better you stay,” he whispers lingering by my lips. 

“Yes,” I mouth. “Me too,” and with that, I begin to snog the most powerful man in the 17th-century history of France. 

The Tardis won’t be happy to hear about this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With this chapter, I think you will realise how "the tone is set" in this story, what kind of story I want to tell. That's why I kept it brief with Ceicilus and I will keep it brief with the others. I know there is a lot of potentials, but I wanted a story that is revolving around Richelieu and everything else would be too distracting.


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After spending the night with Richelieu, you both find yourself in a strange situation being called "the morning after". The Tardis is pressing for results and you are pressing for concessions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story started out light-hearted with a bit of joking and situational humour but with keeping writing chapter after chapter I realised this never can be just  
> a fun ride, this needs to have some angst and drama and heartbreak.
> 
> I also notice, as I had an "Intermission" chapter, it's kind of weird to call the chapters "Chapters xy", so I might give them real names.. but I have to come up with them.

The next morning I wake up to the feeling that something is tickling me at the sol of my feet. A fly maybe. Or the monster under the bed. Instantly I startle awake with a gasp, turning from laying on my stomach onto my back. When my field of view clears, I see Armand stand at the end of the bed, chuckling. I look around, unsure of what is going on. Drowsy from sleep I need a couple more seconds to comprehend where I am and what has happened. 

 

With relief, I fall back into the pillow, “Jesus.”

 

“That’s blasphemy!” the Cardinal points at me, smirking. I share it. 

 

His eyes travel over my body, and only there I notice, I am bare naked only covered by a white bed sheet. Quickly I hug the fabric tighter, finally seeing that Armand is in full attire. 

 

“What time is it?”

 

“Seven o’clock in the morning,” he glances over to a clock that stands on the sill.  

 

“Gosh, I thought I’d overslept again,” I follow his gaze seeing the sun has only risen short before. Armand keeps standing at the spot, looking down at me with a gentle smile. Then I put one and one together, “How did you dress so quickly?”

 

“I am up since two and a half hours,” he explains as if this is some natural behaviour, finally walking around the bed.

 

“You are insane!” I bring myself in an upright position, looking around in the bed. The sheets are rumpled.

 

“Am I?” he smirks again. “Well, I already did a good portion of paperwork, and I signed a treaty with Sweden, so,” he makes a gesture with his hand, “I probably am.”

 

He notices that I am looking for my clothes, and so he gives me the honour of giving them to me. They hung over a stool beside the bed, and I assume he has picked them up in the morning, because the last thing I know about my clothes is, they got scattered all over the floor very carelessly. 

I nod, and look at him expectantly, “Would you mind..?” my finger makes a small circle in the air.

 

Cocking an eyebrow is his way of questioning my motive, like ‘really?’. But he turns with a chuckle, “Did you sleep well?”

 

“Y-yes, I did,” I shove my underwear and the rest of my clothes over my body as quickly as I can, “I slept very well actually.” 

It surprises me. In the past days, sleep wasn’t an option the Tardis allowed me in a gracious amount. Tucking the shirt into my mid-century breaches, I watch the Cardinal stand patiently with his back toward me. The gesture is raising a smile from me before I turn to look at the bed again. 

It had been a passionate night; after we had joined for kissing, we did stumble across the room. We were tucking at each other’s clothes, fumbling the breeches open, awkwardly getting rid of our boots, before we fell into the bed. All kissing and demanding closeness from each other. Not rough, but urgent, and also carefully. He seemed in need, and I guess I was in one too. When you travel with the Doctor, there is no real time for sex life, let alone a relationship. 

 

“Hungry?” he turns suddenly, ripping me out of my pleasant flashbacks. 

 

He stands quite close to me, and it feels like the usual awkward moment after a night with a person one doesn’t know that well, “Yes?”

 

Hesitating for a second, he motions to the table behind him, “Breakfast.”

 

I consider him again. This plate hasn’t brought a servant in here; he never would allow that, so he has picked it up then? He, Cardinal Richelieu, the First Minister of France, brought me breakfast? I feel almost a bit proud. So proud that I forget to react. 

 

“Not good?” he glances down at the plate, on his forehead building up lines. He is about to get grim. Maybe because I don’t value his effort quickly enough, perhaps because he thinks he does something wrong. 

 

“Brilliant, actually,” I quickly step up to him, giving him a shy smile. 

 

Here I am, still half asleep, my hair a mess, and he in his dark leather clothes, his golden cross hanging in front of his chest looking fresh and fanciable. Besides I know what I want to do, I don’t know how to do it. This man is not the usual date I pick up on a Friday evening, and for a moment, we only look at each other both filled up with doubt and uncertainty. 

Speaking for myself, I know he has mistresses, he is giving as much about the commandment of abstinence as the Pope in Rome — I don’t care.

 

His green eyes pierce down at me as if he is expecting something particular from me. No, not from me, from himself! I can read in his eyes, filled with confusion —  cluelessness. His typical visits don’t stay overnight, which makes me wonder why I was allowed to. I am not that beautiful, not that important. It also explains his mood. He hates not knowing; he hates not being in control. 

 

He swirls around, away from me, making it impossible to read more or react to it, “I expect a visitor, and then I have to see the King and Queen.”

 

“Oh- of course,” I say, walking over to my jacket and the rest of my gear. This is obviously the moment I get kicked out. 

 

He turns, watching me fiddle with my jacket, “I appreciate you’d stay,” his tone is softer now, slightly afraid. 

 

The concern warms my heart, but in shock, I remember the Tardis; I have to go back. Another blow is that I still haven’t come clean with the fact that I need his blood. Knowing he would be away the whole day, I decide I can’t sit here and waste the day. “I can’t, the Tardis!”

 

“Tardis?”

 

“My horse,” I stutter, reaching for the rapier and the weapons belt. “Listen, Arma- Rich- Card-,” I bite myself on the lips to shut up before I ruin it completely. The best is to stand there looking at him in the hope that he will understand something impossible. He won’t. “I have to go, you’ll be busy all day, and I…”

 

“I see,” from one second to another, he is cold as ice — a misunderstanding.

 

So I take a dare, “I don’t think so!” 

 

He whirls around, mad almost, “I gave you the allowance to stay, and you decline my gracious offer!” With a frown, I step back. This is not the man I kissed the evening before. “What was his name? The Doctor? Is this where you are going? To the Doctor?”

 

Now I see. Richelieu is jealous. He is misguided — twisting my words to his advantage. A man like him is not used to be treated like this. He thinks I reject him, and it hurts my heart. Richelieu turns around to leave the room without waiting for an answer. I am about to become history for him.

 

Knowing I have to explain myself for various reasons, I begin to run, “Armand!” By now I have figured, using his first name, is like a spell he can’t retreat from. 

 

“I’ve done nothing wrong, “I begin my speech,”  I’d rather wait here, but time is a pressing matter for me these days. The Tardis is not my horse; it’s... it’s a place I have to go to. I don’t expect you to understand this or value it in any positive way.

 

“The man I call the Doctor is my friend. Nothing more! I am not his companion in any other sense. And if I could, I’d spend my time here waiting a week for you alone, but I can’t! So, once again, I beg you; do not treat me in such an unfair manner.”

 

In the distance, I can hear a cock coo, and I feel the cold has crept back into the room. October will soon be November. Richelieu thinks it through. One one side he regrets the night maybe, or at least that he has let me stayed. On the other hand, it feels like he is slightly attached, curious and in turmoil about it. Being attached is a dangerous situation. I don’t behave like all the other people in his life. He calls them sometimes creatures, creations of his, but I decided I won’t be one of them. I am not his toy, and I make my stand about it. 

 

“Countess,” he begins, still strict but not angry anymore. “I think you lied to me last night about who you are and many other things. You said you wanted my help -” 

 

“- I do!” 

 

His hand rub over his cheeks and his goatee, “Was that the reason why you found your way into my bed?” 

 

My hands come up in the air in despair, all my gear is rustling, “alone the assumption is giving me too much credit!” 

 

He steps forward, “The truth, then!” 

 

“I can’t,” I lower my head slightly, feeling like being defeated. My answer makes him growl and turn. If I leave here without another word, he couldn’t care less. As I don’t want to depart like this, I follow him into his study. And only there I can catch up with him. “You wouldn’t believe me; you would tell your guards to hang me because beside you are the cleverest and broad-minded person here, you won’t believe me. Mostly, because right now, I can’t prove anything. “

 

He peers down at me from across the room, “You can proof in the future?” It sounds not indifferent, it appears curious, but it also sounds wrong as if he enquires about a business concern. Am I that? A business?

 

“When I come back next time,” I can hear footsteps coming down to the Cardinals room. He hears them too and checks his posture. 

 

“I expect you to come back at the end of the week,” he demands. 

 

“That’s not how it works,” the Tardis is as reliable as the central heating here, “I have no control over my time. It can be days, weeks… months.” 

The way his eyebrows twitch I can see he is unhappy with the statement, but he knows he is not the master of me. The Doctor is, and this is something he despises. 

 

I wish he would give me a least a smile or a gesture, a sign that he understands and accepts. That last night was worth a bit more as just this behaviour. Even he wants, there is no more time, the doors open and a minister gets announced. 

 

My time is up. Ours is. 

 

“Leave now,” he says in a hushed tone, hard features staring at me. 

 

“But-,” already I know, we will regret this way of saying goodbye. 

 

“Out!” he calls, pointing at the door. The minister having entered. So I do the only thing I can. I bow, walking backwards. 

 

“Your Grace,” then I turn away from the minister, and with that, I am by the door. Hearing the two men greet each other and also how Richelieu says, “It’s hard to find good servants, implacable! “

 

With those words in my head, I walk back to my horse, that has been guarded all night. With a heavy heart, I flee out of town, back to the Tardis. One can’t say I am keen to return to her. I will bring nothing but disappointment, and she will give me nothing but accusations. There is no other place to go to, so my way leads without any detour to the box. Still, it’s enough time that allows sad thoughts to take over. 

 

When I arrive at the Tardis, I let go of the horse and step through the door. The ride was accompanied by cold air, and I feel my hands have gone numb. Quickly I climb the stairs to the upper balustrade that goes around the console, where I start to undress. At first, I try to ignore the humming and beeping but I can’t for long. 

 

Since the Doctor is gone, I can understand the Tardis’s noises, something I haven’t before. One night, so I assume she has linked me with her mind. It makes me have endless monologues in the control room. 

 

“No, I wasn’t successful,” I answer unnerved. “It doesn’t matter! I’ll manage another time. Just tell me where we go next.”

 

She beeps and groans, “It’s obvious I spent the night there… No, I won’t say if I spent the night with him because it is none of your business!” 

 

I am stripped down to my underwear, ready for the next costume, “Where next, I asked!” The lights begin to flicker uncontrolled. She has a fit I decide to ignore. I am half naked, and I am not having a row when being that. After blocking her out of my mind — because I quickly figured I can with a bit of concentration, the room goes dark with a bang. With a huff, I let myself slack down into the Doctor’s armchair. This is not going to last forever — hopefully. But then it is me who loses out on patience. 

 

“Listen, stop being like that. I do what I can. This with Richelieu… I admit… but it happened.” I am about to search for other clothes in the dark. Kindly she lights slowly up again, but wheezes in protest. 

 

With it, I am losing my temper coming back down to the console in my socks. “You are a time machine! Get a grip! We will save the Doctor! I will! Okay.? We save the Doctor and are back for tea and cookies yesterday. It won’t harm anyone but me when we need a little longer. Because, and I think you forget, I am the only one here able to die of old age. So I ask you once again, where next?”

 

There is silence then. I accept it as an understanding. She provides me with a date on one of the monitors. 1957. London. 

 

I nod, “I’ll do anything for you, but you have to give me a promise. After London, we have to return here. And with here I mean the same time slip. A week from now, understood?”

 

It needs a while, but then she peeps. The lever starts to move, we are about to fly into the time vortex, but I jump toward the console, taking the lever, pulling it back. The box makes a disgruntled noise and shakes in protest, “It’s a promise then! Don’t dare break it!” I push the lever back and pace through the door, “And I need a book on Richelieu and French History. And fencing lessons!”

 

We spend two days in the time vortex, till the Tardis has found a new face and a right time spot. 

 

London in 1957 is a sharp contrast to France 1625, but it’s something I take gratefully, knowing it is closer to what I would call home as anything else I’ve experienced these past days. 

 

The man I have to find is a journalist working for a television news show called The Hour. When I am honest, I believe I have never heard of it, but I can remember vaguely that my grandmother used to talk about “a proper news show” in the late 50s that cared about real news and not the boulevard like these days. She is dead by now, so I won’t be able to ask her. 

 

Randall Brown is the name, and I find him in a café. Reading a newspaper and drinking orange juice and wearing an elegant three-piece suit, looking way different as The Doctor, who often reminded me off a wrecked up magician or a guy having a mid-life crisis.

 

“Considering I am over 2000 years old, the word MID life crisis seems like a joke!” 

 

Never in my life, I have spent watching a man drink his juice and study a newspaper even for five minutes. Now, I sit across the room, and watch him for an hour already, sipping coffee. 

 

The man doesn’t look as if he would appreciate a direct approach, asking for a blood sample, and right now, I am not in any haste. Time has become relative; I’ll be back in France in a week no matter if I’ll spend an hour or a year in this Café. 

 

Beforehand I followed him from his apartment house, he had left around eight. In a reasonable distance of course. We both then took a stroll through the park where he seemed to enjoy the spring sun, and so did I. We ended it with having coffee and juice in the Café which isn’t far away from his office when I am not mistaken. It’s Sunday, and I wonder if this is his habit on such day. 

 

The time in the park and the sixty minutes in the corner of the room, watching Mister Brown allows me to contemplate about the confrontation I had with Richelieu. In my head, I still call him Cardinal or Richelieu, never Armand. The man is not my boyfriend, is he? Only thinking about it feels like an affront, so it is better not to think at all about it, but that is easier said as done. The scene of him sending me away is replaying again and again in my mind. 

 

What would the Doctor say to all this? It’s hard to imagine because it is usually him deciding what to do and what not, how to handle time, which is so delicate. He once told me even the slightest impact could rupture the web of time in crucial ways. 

It made me wonder in silence how many ruptures the Doctor had forced through his life, knowing it was never something small when he interacted. I came to a conclusion it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, so my interference with the Cardinal and the rupture I involuntary cause might not end in a full-blown disaster. 

 

For a couple of moments, I had looked down at my hands for some reason. My fingertips are still burning when I remember I had touched Richelieu’s body with them. When I look back up the table I guarded like a watchdog, it is empty. 

 

“Damn it!” I am about to jump up but don’t get far. 

 

“You,” Randall Brown is standing in front of me, towering. His eyes are behind thick frame glasses, his hair is slick, and his coat hangs over his arm. It dawns on me; I am not as good as a watchdog as I thought. 

 

“Me,” I swallow, my hands feeling out the edge of the table I am sitting at. 

 

Brown looks around for a moment, knowing he will attract attention when keep standing, so he sits down. His hat gets placed neatly aside him, “it came to my attention, that you seemed to follow me since I’ve left my house.” 

 

Gotcha! 

 

There is no need in denying it, “I have.” 

 

“Why is that so?” he asks calmly. There is no sign of anger and no pressure. 

 

This makes me nervous, but this is also an emotion I can’t afford to have at the moment. Instead of answering immediately, I reach into my jackets pocket getting out a small flat device, placing it in front of him. He eyes it curiously without touching. 

What I need is one drop of blood, and this device can retract and store it within one short moment. It would be easy to assault him, pressing it into his skin by his hand; what I feel is rude and unnecessary. Caecilius was helpful, and when they all share at least a bit of the kindness the Doctor has, they’ll help me on free will basis. 

 

“There is a man,” I begin. “He needs your help…”

 

When I leave the Café an hour later, I got what I wanted from Randall Brown — provided with free will. The story I told him, how shall I say, he’ll forget it within the next few hours. The device not only extracts blood, but it also  _ can  _ inject a little impulse, making one forget. 

 

Why? I told you already. Because even small happenings can rupture the web of time. A full blood journalist like Randall better not dig more in-depth about a man named The Doctor.

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed the little glimpse at Randall Brown, my all time favourite character, for whom I have written so much fiction already.  
> Thanks for reading this story and leaving comments. I appreciate any constructive input!


	6. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You return to the Cardinal. There is a question you have to ask yourself; when?

As soon as I am through the door, I hand over the blood sample to the Tardis, putting it inside a slot she opens for me. Then I demand her to bring me back to Paris, but something goes wrong. We end up in a Time Storm, whatever the hell this is. We have to spend a week in the time vortex, and the only thing I can do is spent the time in solitude with reading the book the Tardis provided me with. I also work on my fencing skills. Countless hours I train via a hologram and with the aid of pictures and videos. Besides that, I do only sleep and eat. The Tardis and I barely speak, well she barley beeps at me.

 

Then after an endless week, I can’t tell if it is day or night — I am just about to train my Balestra (a jump forward followed by a lunge) when I hear the deep bang, that announces our arrival. Within an instant I let my training rapier drop and run through the door, already taking off my jumper and trainers, as if I am superman, about to burst out the telephone booth in my costume.     

My cloak and clothes hang still where I left them, over the handrail of the higher console area. I am so excited I forget to ask where we have parked and also to ask the most crucial question: when.

 

We are not in the woods, nor somewhere else in town. No, we are right at the court, inside the palace. Noticing I am in a room with potential danger through guards, I begin carefully walk around the Tardis to take the place in. There is a bed, a table, and there is something else hanging in the air that makes it feel familiar. I can’t remember having been here before, not in this room, a look outside the window I see a view I don’t know. Then I spot a cupboard which I open, finding a well-known row of shirts and a red velvet tunica. This is Armand’s bedroom, but not the one I remember. Has he moved his private place? Or is this maybe another residency and not even Paris?

 

There is just one way to find out, and so I go to the door, to open it. No one is guarding it nor the high floor that stretches in front of it. I still have my ‘Entrance Paper’, so in case I get caught, I have at least a reason to be here. Strolling quickly down the floor I find another door, that leads me into the gardens. Big walls in the distance. This could be anywhere in the country.

 

I shrug it off and continue my stroll, about to wonder what has happened to the red guards, when I suddenly stand right in front of two. We all are shocked, standing still for a second and then at the same moment we pull out our swords with verve. It had been a wise idea to take fencing lessons!

 

With brutal force, the metal comes down at me, but I know how to parry them off, how to move my feet, so I get out of the way, while I deal blows myself. My studies and practice shows, and I can see the dissatisfaction in the faces of my opponents. It makes them retreat from technique and turn to harsh force.

Having a plan in mind, I suddenly run away from them, making them follow me. Quickly I pace around a column, only to show up behind them. With energy, I throw myself onto the back of one of them, making him stumble into his comrade. Seeing them lay on the ground, I waste no further time and pace through the garden. My run has a sudden end when I find the tip of a sword in front of my nose.

 

“This is your end,” the soldier tells me, and I have the strange feeling I have seen this man before, “I just wanted to let you know.” Then he is about to take a big swing with the weapon, making me act on pure instinct.

 

I fall to the ground, sputtering without interruption, “I am here for Cardinal Richelieu I have a letter please don’t kill me!” My hand searches hastily for the paper holding it up, while my eyes are closed.

 

The expected blow never happens. Instead, I got yanked back on my feet very ungently and pushed forward.

 

The guard brings me into the study of the Cardinal, pushing hard into my back. It makes me almost fall — almost. So he grabs me by my shoulders, his fingers dig deep into the muscle under my collarbone, “Kneel before the Cardinal!”

 

I groan in agony, doing what he wants. The fun fact is, he doesn’t let go of me, just keeps pressing into my skin and not even the leather cloak is saving me from the pain. I am far away from kneeling and close to laying, my face is making grimaces racked with pain.

 

Only when the Cardinal clears his throat, the man lets go of me, and I quickly rub the pain away, uttering some grateful words. With the pain easing away, I can take a look of where I am. The room lays half in the shadows, the Cardinal sits in the darkness, and I only can see his silhouette, as the sun shines harsh into the rest of the room. It’s not the study I’ve been before.

 

The guard takes off my hat and throws it away, unveiling me. I dare a shy look before the guard is pressing my head down again. Obviously, the man hasn’t had his fun yet, and I am a welcoming scapegoat for his bad mood.

 

“We found her wandering around,” the soldier explains his master, stepping up to the table to give Richelieu the battered piece of paper I had once received. “She fought my men.  I wanted to bring her to the Bastille but… she showed us this.”

 

The paper rustles between his fingers, and I wonder what is there to study. He’d be familiar with his own handwriting, shouldn’t he?

“Leave me alone with her,” he demands, standing now behind his desk.

 

“Your Eminence? She tackled two of my best men, are you sure-”

 

“-Yes!”

 

The guard bows and gives me a last dismissive look, I can only answer with a cheeky glare. Then he paces away, leaving me kneeling on the ground.

My cloak feels heavy, and my knees hurt from the harsh push down onto the stone floor, let alone my shoulder. For a reason I don’t know I wait for the Cardinals command to stand up, but he keeps quiet, just stands there by his desk. Looking at me, what I can’t see, but feel. So I slowly raise my head, looking at him quizzically. He is still standing in the shadows, and aside my eyes have gotten used to the dark, I can’t see him properly.

 

I glance around, something is amiss, but I don’t know what. It’s not the room. It is a feeling inside of me. I had since I burst out the doors of the Tardis and now is growing rash. Like a danger in delay.

 

Giving no more worry, I finally decide to stand up, and he finally decides to come closer. When the sunlight hits him, I note with dismay, that he looks terribly tired and that his curls are now more grey as I remember. My stomach clenches.

 

“Two?” he asks, almost mockingly.

 

Blushing, I smirk looking down at my feet, “of your best men,” and then look at him with a wide smile. I yearn for him, and he can see it.

 

He wants to look statesmanlike, strict and demanding, but I can see the soft impression around his eyes, “Someone has improved her fencing skills.”

 

The words have a sour touch, “What’s the year? How… how long have I been away?”

 

The questions make him frown, but he doesn’t question me, “1627. About two and a half years, since you walked out my door. You’ve surely noticed we moved.”

 

It makes me stumble back, my hand landing on my chest. Suddenly it’s hard to breathe, and I feel my knees weaken. The Tardis has promised. It must have been the Time Storm we’ve been caught in that made her break it. Guilt and exasperation come over me.  

Why? It was only a week for me, it was him who had to go through it. Looking at him again, I notice he hasn’t moved. Has only watched me and the impact of his words. Is it possible that a week has hurt me more as the long two years him?

 

Armand looks calm. I have wandered into his life and then out again. After a week or two, he has put my character ad acta, that’s what his face is telling me. There were more important things, as a stranger being a mistress for one night. I look harder and can see something what he usually hides behind harsh words, powerful gestures and ruthless behaviour toward his enemies. Cardinal Richelieu is no one for taking a break, for giving the silence the chance to overrule him. He is always busy, always plotting, even in prayer or mass.

 

Now, he is forced to a minute of not doing anything. No papers to sign, no conspiracies against him, France or the King to foil. Just me, a stranger from the past and many questions in his head. He wonders, he doesn’t know, and it makes him vulnerable and evident to me.

 

It wasn’t my comeback, it was the way I reacted to the number of years we haven’t seen each other, that makes his statesmen like demeanour falter. Yes, he has dealt with my absence and has decided to forget me. To bury me. France, the King, treaties and war — a welcoming distraction. He couldn’t know I would stumble back into his life like a meteor hitting earth. He couldn’t know - better, he not wanted to believe I wasn’t able to decide on the time of my return. It’s only a glimpse, but I can read it in him, that everything he had done to me in his head, he was sure I had done to him too. My reaction disabusing him. He means something to me, and how could that be?

 

I’ve spent a lot of time reading, when not fencing, not eating, not sleeping. Armand-Jean du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu worked relentlessly for his vision of France. Often with the opinion; the end justifies the means. He did it for the country for the King. And for himself. Power doesn’t stick around, it has to be held in a tight merciless grip. He knows what people say, that he is the devil, the monster they fear.

 

That’s why my reaction makes him falter because he knows that I know all this too. His name is known over cross-borders, cherished and feared. Wherever I was the past years, he knows I surely have heard of him. It’s not about years, it’s about the impression we left in each other.

 

To say I am in love, would be too much, but I have feelings for him. Those tear at me.

 

His long fingers come gently around mine. I wasn’t aware he was so close, neither I was knowledgeable of what this gesture is meaning to me. Entangling my hands with and unwilling to let go, I keep staring at our hands holding and caressing another.

 

“It wasn’t my intention-”

 

“-I know,” he brings my hands to his mouth for a brief kiss. “It wasn’t mine neither.” It’s not a confession you get every day from Cardinal Richelieu. “The king went hunting for a couple of days. Will you join me for an early dinner in my private rooms?”

 

I remember the Tardis, but I don’t want to say no. I have to explain it to him sooner or later anyway, so why not choose sooner, “I’d love to.”

 

A smile, then he purses his lips, then he looks at the doors of his study, as if afraid someone is coming, then at me. I turn also, but he pulls me with him to the other door, that leads to the endless corridor and then to his private rooms.

The tiredness, I had noticed in the beginning, is now gone. Armand seems vivid, enthusiastic when his lips which capture mine in a little corner of the corridor, where no one can see us. With a quick tug, he presses me into the niche, unable to hold back, he bows down to kiss me. First gentle, then with hunger. This man is a natural wonder filled with surprises, I think while kissing him back and humming under his tender bites along my throat and neck.

 

Tugging at my cloak, “This attire …. this has to end.”

 

I grab his leather top, smiling against his lips, “I’ll think of it.”

 

He gives me a low glare, before stepping back, glancing down the corridor and then grabs my hand, leading me to his bedroom door. When we reach it, I make a gesture, he should go first and decide it will be better to give him a little room because there is quite a blue box shock waiting for him.

 

When he has entered, I start to count. One. Two. Three. Well, that’s strange. Four. His face appears in front of me again, eyebrows haywire, and a demanding look, “You not, by any chance, have something to do with that blue box in my rooms?”

 

The way he expresses himself, I guess the man has seen some things in his life, “Uhm..box?” my voice pitches slightly.

 

Not buying my innocent face, he grabs my wrist and pulls me inside, the door going shut behind us. The Tardis is still standing where I left her. Big, blue and beautiful.

 

How often have I witnessed the Doctor introduce his box to others? Many times and I never got tired of it. And I never got tired of admiring the process.

 

Like introducing his girlfriend to his parents sometimes, praising it above all. Sometimes as if the Tardis was the holy grail, sometimes as if it was the most natural in the world. But he never forgot to give it all a special touch. Of wonder and appreciation.

It often was a lengthy speech, about time — and Space. Of everywhere and anywhere you want to go. About tea that never gets cold because we would always be back on time.

 

Oh, how I envied him doing this over and over again. Making those other part-time companions of ours smile in wonder, awe in disbelief and giggle while imagining the possibility.

 

And finally, after all this time, it is my turn.

 

The Cardinal stands in front of the box, his cloak hanging from his shoulders, looking at it, then at me. He stands in the light, and the picture is like a painting. God, he resembles an unknown version of the Doctor, the Dark Lord of Gallifrey —  but we better don’t go there because he - and only he - would be the adequate figure deserving the name.

 

“It’s... uhm... It’s a box,” I say, scolding myself immediately. That’s not how the Doctor usually begins his speech. “What I mean…!” a grown escapes me. I am not made for dramatic lectures.

 

Armand cocks an eyebrow at me, he knows I wanted to say something meaningful, give it all a good show. Thankfully he keeps his snide remarks to himself, only purses his lips, so I join him, looking with him at the box.

 

“So?” he inquires after a bit, reminding me of what I wanted to achieve.

 

“Do you drink tea?“

 

“No.”

 

That’s it then, “For heavens s- it’s a time machine. I am a time traveller and this my box! At least for the time being.”

 

I don’t face Armand just wait for him to get a fit or something, but nothing happens, so I face him eventually. “Did you listen?“

 

He gives me a glare and then a soft smirk. “It’s a time machine.”

 

Doesn’t he believe me? I groan again and step to the door and rip the door open, revealing the bigger on the inside part.

 

The Tardis hums displeased, but I ignore her, her own fault when she decides to park in Richelieu’s bedroom.

 

For the first time I’ve met the Cardinal, I can see him speechless. His eyes dart between the inside and the outside. Probably blasphemy again?

 

“Where can it go?” he makes one step forward, but I stand in his way, and so he takes the step immediately back again.

 

For one second, I can see the real Armand de Richelieu flare to life right in front of me. Clever and prescient. He, of all people in this time, can comprehend the possibilities of the Tardis.

 

What would be of France if he would be able to fly it?

 

“All in time and space. Anywhere you desire and even further. Everything that can be, that will and what could.”

 

Armand gives me a long consideration glance, then the same toward the console and then steps back. I close the door again.

 

“It’s your Doctors, isn’t it?”

 

Nice to know people can’t see me owning such wonder, “Yes, the Tardis is his. I am just his companion. He once picked me up on earth, and since that, I travel with him. “

 

“Just?” he turns back to me. “You are not just. You are so much more. Don’t you see?”

 

I am not aware Armand is one for jokes, and still, I consider him a moment, “No,” I shrug.

 

“I don’t know the Doctor, but when he possesses such,” his hands move up and down praising the blue box, “powerful machine, he can’t be an ordinary man.”

 

“He isn’t,” I agree. “He is everything but. Personally, I think, he is exceptional.”

Richelieu turns away from the box toward me, taking me in, and once again, I feel like a pray, “Exceptional men, take exceptional companions. I am sure he wouldn’t just pick anyone.”

 

It doesn’t speak for me, as I have never seen it that way. It’s Richelieu’s strength pushing people into the right direction with a little effort. To make them feel grand or miserable.

 

I know, I sell myself too short way too often, “He wouldn’t.”

 

A smirk appears on his lips, and I smirk back. It’s true, the Doctor wouldn’t just choose anyone, and right now I am well aware that the Cardinal Richelieu wouldn’t either.

 

His amused look turns into something else.  We both had to wait long enough.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May I tell you that I found utter pleasance writing the "Tardis introducing" dialogue?! I also enjoyed going more into the depth of Richelieu. I have a  
> four books strong copy of his Biography at home (I haven't read it all yet) and here and there I try to throw in some historical facts. I know I portray the Cardinal Richelieu from the TV Show The Musketeers played by Peter Capaldi but still, I enjoy mixing up facts and fiction. I mean, that's how my writing started at all, didn't it? ;)  
> Don't be shy with comments!


	7. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When you tell Richelieu about the Doctor's destiny, there are emotional conflicts rising.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry for the delay. First work killed me and then a stomach bug.

Armand gives the box a last look and then is at me, pressing me against the blue wood, kissing me with passion. My hands come around his neck, groaning over the immediate attention. Saying I did not miss him would be blasphemy itself!

Tugging at the cord of my cloak, the heavy leather comes down to the ground with a soft thud. My jacket follows, and I want to free Armand from his heavy leather tunic, but it’s impossible to do.

 

Breaking the kiss, I say, “This with your attire, this has to end!”

 

He chuckles, before pulling me into another kiss, and together we stumble toward his bed. Not long we’ve got rid of all our clothes, and I find myself under Armand, kissing the skin by my neck. Taking my hands, he presses them over my head into the pillow, his mouth kissing down my collarbone to my breasts.

 

“In long, sleepless nights, it was this that kept me alive,” he breathes hot against my skin. I shudder with every kiss, every breath he takes against my skin. “I thought you gone! Dead. But I couldn’t forget how my tongue felt around your hard flesh,” he repeats his doing, “how warm and delicate your skin felt,” he comes back up kissing my chin, “the way your mouth felt around my manhood.” Oh, we did some indecent things that night.

 

When he kisses me long and craving, I forget his status, I forget the Doctor and my duties. I do the only thing I want at that moment; I live and love.

 

Putting myself in a row with Armand, I would never allow myself, but I feel we both enjoy spending intimate time together, away from higher duties. We searched and found each other.

 

We spend the hour with yearning kisses and lovemaking. We crave each other as if life depends on it. Armand is in total control over me, and I am in complete control over him. We are — strangely — a perfect match.

  


When the hour has passed, my hands caress the back of his neck; my fingers want to play endlessly with his greying short curls. His face still buried by my neck, I feel his mouth place gentle kisses there.

This is new, I think. It is late afternoon, about to get evening, still time to use for something like commanding the country. But Armand makes no notions of returning to his study once again this day.

My fingertips trail over his spine, and he hums content. “All that leisure, your Eminence?” I begin to tease. “The sun isn’t even gone, shouldn’t you plot against Spain or something?”

 

It makes him laugh in delight while rolling off to fall aside me, one hand always connecting with my body.

“To hell with Spain! Literally,” he leans in to kiss me, “I haven’t had a day off since two and a half years, and the King is away. I can spare an afternoon. Hungry?“

 

I nod, and he reaches for a nightgown, then walking to the door, calling out for a servant. It takes a moment in which Armand examines the Tardis from afar, till a boy arrives at the door. He can’t see the inside of the room — not me, nor the Tardis. Armand makes sure of it. He orders the boy to bring him a plate with food. Water and wine. Then he returns to me, sitting beside me, one hand touching my stomach, trailing unseen lines.

 

“What is it then that happened to your Doctor?”

 

That I have to explain, I was aware of before, but I had a weak hope not to. “We’ve been on this planet, called Trenzalore, a planet we shouldn’t ever be. It was a trap, and when the Doctor realised, it was too late.” Armand listens attentively; also, I am not sure if he can understand that there are other planets, lifeforms and endless universe.

 

“Your Doctor,” there is a barrier that is hard to cross for him, “is he…?”

 

I feel like Galileo Galilei or Charles Darwin, about to compromise everything the Cardinal believes in, “The Doctor is a so-called Time Lord, from another planet, and — you see, when they die or when they are about to die, they have a few tricks up their sleeves.”

 

My gesture is telling him not to ask further. To say to him so much about the Doctor and other alien lifeforms, can’t be only a small rupture in the web of time. Telling him more will bring the whole universe down I fear, and then the Doctor will be very angry with me.

 

“There are men, I have to find, scattered all in earth’s history,” I keep on explaining at least the important part, “they all have been given something from the Doctor during his magic trick. How shall I say? Life is like a book, stretching over many, many pages, and the Doctor’s trick was, taking all the pages of his life and scattering them through thousands of years on earth.”

 

“And your duty is to collect them all, putting them back together,” he concludes. “What is it then you need from me to bring your Doctor back? What are those pages?”

 

I push myself up onto my elbow; then I touch one of his forearms, “A sample of your blood.”

 

He looks at me for a moment and then holds out his arm, “then.”

 

I’ve expected him to make a bit more fuss about it, “What? Just like that? “

 

“My physician is bleeding me often enough anyway, another bit of my blood won’t hurt. It seems to go to good use.”

 

In horror, I come up more, reaching for his arm. Only now I see the small scars by his veins, “Don’t! Please, don’t let them do this again, Armand.”

 

He looks at me with an arched eyebrow, half amused, probably wondering if I have such knowledge from my Doctor. “I mean it. Don’t let them bleed you again; this is doing no good.”

 

“Fine,” but still offers me his arm.

 

I glance at the Tardis, “No, not yet.”

 

“Why is that?” he wonders, following my look to the box, “I thought it’s a matter of life and death.”

 

Standing up to slip into my long shirt, that covers most of my body, at least the vital half I say; “The truth is, that as soon as I have your blood sample and return into that box, it will take off, and I’ll never be able to come back again. The Tardis would have what she needed, and the rest would be to find all those other incarnations, get their blood. Reawaken the Doctor, and that’s it.”

 

Richelieu understands my dilemma. At the moment he is not willing to let me go like this, but by now he has guessed, I genuinely care for the Doctor, that I want to have him back safe and sound in the Tardis at some point.

 

“After you saved the Doctor,” he begins slightly uncertain, “can’t you ask him to stop by? He owns this… this blue monstrosity, he could demand her to come back and …,” we exchange a look. We both know this sentence would have no satisfying end.

 

I fear for his anger again, but I can’t hold back, “Then what, Armand? I stay here? For how long? The rest of my life? The rest of your life? Or I ask the Doctor to let me pop in here and there?” I give him a careful look, trying to read in him. “And when we are at it, as what shall I live here? History is telling me, the Cardinal Richelieu doesn’t have a wife. A mistress maybe, am I that then? A mistress? For how long? Till you get tired of me?”

 

I am about to talk myself into a fit about the topic. Within seconds every worry and trouble about this is lashing over me, and I stop carrying who stands here in front of me. There has to be made a point.

Armand doesn’t look angry, but he stands up from the bed and comes slowly toward me, I don’t even notice.

 

“Where shall I live? Will I become one of your creatures, living in a cupboard or something?”

 

He grabs me by the shoulders, “Be quiet!”

 

“Or what?” I exclaim. This time I won’t let him overrule me.

 

“Or you’ll be kissed till you are out of air to complain,” he pulls me against him kissing me with demand. His arms are wrapping around me, holding me close. His left hand is spanning around the back of my head, keeping me in place. Overruled I am.

 

“I understand,” he lets go of my lips, but not my body. “I do. I didn’t think that far.”

 

This time it is me cocking an eyebrow. Not that far? Wow, the impression I must have on him is slowly getting to my head. He kisses me again and only stops when his servant knocks on the door with something to eat.

 

The evening is spent on food and a bit of wine. With more kisses and lovemaking, till we fall asleep exhausted and happy.

 

In the early hours of the day, I slowly awake, staring at the ceiling, to birds chirping in the distance. When do I have woken to birds chirping the last time? A century ago. A galaxy away.

 

Where am I? Since I am jumping through the ages on and on, I have trouble to remember where I am when waking up. The 1950s? The Tardis? Where in the Tardis? France! Armand!

 

Turning my head, I find him deep asleep beside me, laying on his back. The sheet not covering his chest. It’s too warm these days anyway. It brings a smile to my face. I had believed he might have gone to work again, but with the King on the hunt, he seems to allow himself indeed some rest. I let him and watch him sleep. His breath is even and deep, his chest rising and falling in a relaxed rhythm.

Spare chest hair covering his lean torso. He has muscles, but is thin, and has no reserve what worries me a bit. For his age, he looks rather attractive. The amount of work he does is way too much for one single person, but I know he will do it till the end.

I smirk looking at his beautifully dishevelled curls. Last night I had the impression they smell like peppermint.

 

Watching him like this raises a fire in me, and I simply can’t hold back and lean over to give a kiss onto his chest — first one, then a second and so on. Down to his stomach, and there a first hum escapes him. Armand slowly wakes up, and when I trail along the thin line of hair from his navel to his loins, I can feel him steer completely awake.

 

“Love,” he whispers, and it makes me lose my mind. It’s an endearment so beautiful uttered from his mouth that I can’t get over it.

Kissing my way back to him, I shove myself on top of him, finally reaching his mouth, pressing light kisses over his chin and onto the corner of his lips.

  
  


“Such delight,” he entangles his long fingers with my hair, pulling me into a leisure kiss. Biting my lips gently, his tongue luring mine, and I can’t restrain myself anymore.

 

Resting my head against his chest, Armand’s hand come up caressing my sweaty back, before making us both turn, and snogging me extensively.

 

“I haven’t thought you so tender,” I catch his looks, and he raises an eyebrow at me, placing a kiss on my collarbone, before laying aside me. He makes me roll into his arms, my head laying on his chest.

 

“When I ask you about the future,” for a person like him, he has a hard time asking, “would you tell me?”

 

“What is it you would want to know about?” the Doctor never asked me if I wanted to know about the future, he showed me! Can it hurt to tell Armand about what will come? “France?”

 

“Also,” he nods. “Can you tell me about me?”

 

I am not laughing because the question is humouring me, “A question I always had on my mind,” he raises an eyebrow to it, while his hand keeps caressing my hip. “I never dared to ask.”

 

“Why?”

 

I could answer that I think it can’t do good to know too much about the future or tell him about the dilemma of time travel and Beethoven’s fifth — a man he’ll never know about. Instead, I shrug my shoulders, “Because I never cared,” of course, there is also another truth, and my eyes seem to read them off the ceiling, “There is a difference between you and me.”

 

“That is?”

 

“History books will remember your name,” a gentle laugh escapes me, the realisation of it, doesn’t hurt as much as imagined, “but not mine.”

 

There is that part between his eyebrows, above his nose, sometimes twitching when an idea is about to come out very good on his side but very bad for someone else. Making his name heard in the books of the future is flattering, the aim he always has. Knowing it’s my lose holds him back to be cheerful about it. Affection it is toward me.

 

“France won’t forget your name,” I reach over, brushing a few curls from his forehead, “not ever. Nor will the world. They will write books about you. Richelieu will be a name, that won’t be forgotten, in case you feared.”

 

The information seems for a second overwhelming, “but how? How will they remember me?” It makes me frown, so he continues, “I’ve done terrible things,... I will do more. I know people will say I was a monster, while others say I was a visionary. I admit the latter would please me more, but I can’t do anything about people’s views. What I do, I do for France. My actions bring out the best in France but the worst in men … The worst in me.”

 

I sit up, so I can look him in the eyes. His self-knowledge is estimable as distressing. “You are afraid.”

 

He begins to nod, slowly, then with emphasis, “That I will go to hell for it.”

 

Hell. Heaven. I remember what the Doctor once said to me, “Hell, is just heaven for bad people.” Even the Doctor can’t know what comes after. Sometimes I wonder what happens with his old incarnation when he regenerates. Maybe they all wait somewhere for heaven or hell to come.

 

Armand gives me a laugh, “I know you read your books, your encyclopedias, but by now you know me. In persona.  What is it you think of me?”

 

I wish he wouldn’t go there, because how good do I know him?

 

“Armand, I don’t think I have the right to judge, nor the skill. I don’t think you are cruel because you want to, but because you have to. Maybe it is indeed better; I don’t stay too long. I’d see you then, reign over France with all the force and brutal strength they will write about. I couldn’t stand it. I like the excluded view I have,” at the end, I shrug my shoulders, and get up. My stomach crumbles, and I go for the plate from the evening, where some cheese and bread is left. I examine the Tardis, I can feel her pressing and urging me to make my goodbyes, but I decide to ignore her for the moment. “It’s selfish, but I can’t meddle with history. I can’t make you … different. I… I care for you. Please don’t ask again.”

 

Reaching for his nightgown, he comes over to me, looking at me long and hard, “I won’t.”

 

“Now what?” I know the answer.

 

“You’ll step into your box and come back another time,” he smirks at me, his eyes sad, but he wills it away.

 

“It can be months! Years, Armand. Two. Three. A decade even!” I protest, knowing it makes no sense. I have to leave, have to go on with my mission. I can’t stay here because I don't belong here. I’d meddle with time and the historical figure of Cardinal Richelieu too much. I’d be able to bring France down, there I am sure.

 

“Then so it will be,” he says. “I take what I can get from you, and when the box decides to take you away for a decade, I will wait a decade.”

 

“How can you say this so lightly?” it makes me angry, it makes me sad, and it makes me want to give up on everything.

 

“Do I have a choice?” he makes me look at him. “We both don’t have one, and so I take what destiny is giving me. I admit, if I could, I would do everything in my power to make you stay or go with you, but it’s obviously in a higher power. And…” he looks down, here it comes, “there is still France. The King needs me, and France needs me too.”

 

Of course. “Your love for France,” I only say, not being disappointed at all. “I shouldn’t tell you, but you’ll leave a deep mark in history. Of France. And the world. A remarkable man.”

 

It makes him proud; I can see it in the gleam of his eyes. He takes what he has with me. A few days at most, making him happy, letting him live at least a little bit like an ordinary man with wants and needs. The rest of his life span he will serve France. This is the moment where I admit to myself how less he needs me and how much I do need him.

 

Opening the door to the Tardis, to place my gear inside, Armand glances inside, before deciding to turn away till I have closed the door again. It might be better if he does not know everything.

 

Then the only thing left is to make our goodbyes, “Armand.”

 

Once more, he surprises me by reaching out to pull me into a gentle kiss. Long and loving. It doesn’t make it easier to go.

 

He glances down to his hands, where he wears two different rings. A silver one, with a red diamond in the middle and the French Fleur de Lis engraved in the silver part he takes off and holds it up to me. “This is my insignia ring. I once received it from the King after the Siege of La Rochelle. I want you to have it.”

 

“No, I can’t-” Armand reaches for my hand and places the ring inside. No objections allowed. It’s a beautiful piece, and I will keep it in high honour. “I’ll wear it around my neck, close to my heart.”

 

“This night, this time with you,” he begins then, “as limited it is, it means something to me. You mean something and you won’t be forgotten when you will have left me today.”

 

I kiss him once more and step half inside the Tardis under his expecting looks. It will be the first time he sees the Tardis ‘in action’, “When I step inside here, the box will … start to vanish. The sound she makes, remember it. When you hear it again, it means I am back.”

 

“I won’t forget then,” he makes a step back, “Till next time.”

 

“Till next time,” with a deep breath, I let go of the door and turn toward the console. On the monitor, I can see the Cardinal stand there, waiting for my disappearance. Usually, the Tardis would have taken off by now, but this time I know, it is upon me to pull that lever. I can’t look, so I close my eyes and yank the lever down.

 

With wheezing and whooshing, we leave the 17th Century of France into the Time Vortex.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I wrote this chapter as draft a year ago, there was way more smut! Writing Richelieu (as in You are mine, and mine alone) M/R Rated seems so appropriated (gosh yes, shame on me), but the story is now underlined with so much more as smut, and suddenly it didn't fit anymore. That's why I defused it. 
> 
> A second "Intermission" chapter is already done and will follow shortly.


	8. Intermission 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seeking out two other faces of the Doctor you find yourself in a Scottish bar, contemplating about how to go on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another intermission chapter, so I can give two other Capaldi Characters some room and also some emotional thoughts, that the reader is having.

How long since I came first into this bar - all smoke and bad air? All drinks and semi tasting finger food. It feels like weeks, but it’s only days.

 To hell with time, I think so very often while sipping from the long neck bottle of beer. To hell with this bar. To hell with the Tardis.

I haven’t seen her for a few days now, not because she has made up her mind kicking me out, but because I checked into a cheap hotel above the bar, while she stands somewhere in the streets of Glasgow.

We had a row, and one word let to another wheezing, and I told her I am out. I took some money, a bag and stepped out, walking four hours through the streets, ending up in this damn bar.

 What we had a row about? I flippin’ wish I could remember! It had probably something to do with the France of 1600 something and a priest I only just met. Alternatively, it was about me making a point about being independent, about being worried as much as the bloody machine I was serving with all I could, without ever feeling some way of appreciation.

 

Maybe it was the guy I had to search out right before, that bloody arse of a Scotsman, who was never to shy using one obscenity for another. The F-word was something he used like others’ Please’ and ‘Thanks’.

Some minister just had resigned, or maybe he had pulled some strings helping some guys next door to overthrow the minister, who could tell? I don’t care. Anyhow, it was an unfit time when I showed up in his office — not that there ever was a good time in Malcolm Tucker’s life.

 “I don’t want to be rude but-”

 “Listen, darlin’, whatever the fuck it is,” he went mental. “Whatever you are, maybe a fucking retard of a journalist, no one is giving you a fucking interview.”

 “I am not a journalist!” I protested.

 He pointed at the telly that hung in his office, “Listen, Mary Sue, my minister is just going down like Lewinski going down on Clinton, I don’t have the bloody nerve,” he stopped for a second considering me. “Are you looking for a job? I don’t offer any jobs, not even blow jobs, okay? The broo is three streets northwest.”

 So that’s where I went mental, “The fuck! Listen, Malcolm Fucking Tucker, keep the fucking shut up, and sit down for a fuck use of a minute, will ya! Because if not, I swear to God, I rip your head off, transforming the rest of your useless body into a fruit bowl, placing those fucking oranges from your desk onto your neck!”

 Except for the telly, there was no sound, while he stared at me unsure if he should be warned or spurred on by my words. Never having been one for such strong language, I was shocked by my own words.

Before Tucker would see through me, I pointed my finger at him with a grim face, while I approached him, searching for the device with my other hand.

 “What’s that? A raid? How the fuck did you even get in here?” there was no way he could go, except behind his desk.

 “It’s not!” it wouldn’t help to explain to him about the Doctor and how in need I was for his help, so I did the only thing I could. I jumped over the desk, toppling him over with many clamours no one from the outside reacted to.

It wasn’t all the attitude or the swearing, it was what he said before I pressed the device right into his face (because he fucking deserved it), “You’re fucking useless!”

 

 

                            “I am.”

 “You are what?”

 I hadn’t noticed I had mumbled the words out loud, nor had I noticed I had company. Sipping once again from the beer I let it hover in the air, turning my head to the man, that has sat down at the table beside me. Slightly buzzed, I ignore we have never met before, “Useless.”

 Glancing down at the row of four glasses in front of him, I wonder how I could have missed his coming in. The jacket slightly shabby, once a designer coat, the tie loose, the hair tousled and the nose red. The glasses remind me of Randall Brown, a dry alcoholic, but this one is not.

 “Doctor Pete,” finally I let the half-empty bottle settle onto the wood in front of me.

 There is no sign of surprise, only a slow nod. Doctor Pete is one of those visiting this bar daily. Transforming the well-earned money into a well-deserved buzz, “I missed your name.”

 “I never said a name.”

 “So,” he orders a fifth drink and asks me with a look if I also want one, “who are you then?”

 I decline, “I am just passing through.”

 “For someone sleeping upstairs, and coming down here since a week, this passing through seems to be odd,” the harsh Glaswegian brogue is even harder to understand when it gets slurred.

 Watching him for a bit, I spare us an answer and only nod. The alcohol hasn’t ripped him off his cleverness — interesting. I don’t deny it.

 “I don’t think no one ever is,” he then says, and my frown tells him I can’t follow, “useless.”

 Unsure if he gives me and the rest of the planet too much credit, because I remember Léon from school and he was useless as a bucket of sand, “it’s hard to agree on it whole heartily.”

 His response is a hearty laugh. It makes me smile while he then considers me, knowing I could prove him wrong about pointing out all those Leon’s on this planet, “Every single one, even the bad, the stupid, the envy, the egocentric, we all have a purpose. For something, for someone. Without the bad, we wouldn’t know what is good. And so on.”

 I turn the bottle with the coaster, before reaching into my pocket to get the device out, regarding it. Doctor Pete does too, without asking questions.

 “Tell me, then, what is your purpose?”

 Doctor Pete raises his glass to his lips, about to drink, but then decides to answer me, “to drink.”

 The Tardis had told me about him, right the moment I had returned from Tucker. I hadn’t slept for a while and had been on edge for quite some time, but there had been no thank you, no sign of worry, no nothing. Just the next job, on and on again.

Even if I had wanted, I couldn’t anymore. Falling flat on my face, losing consciousness in front of the console, I drifted off into sleep.

 In my dream, I saw all the faces I had visited and even those I hadn’t yet met. They all talked to me, yelled, whispered, laughed, all at the same time, trying to tell me something. What, I could not understand. Only at the end, when I was able to focus on Richelieu, I could also focus on a word, the one Tucker had used. Useless. It felt like torture. It felt like my dreams weren’t my own anymore, like being manipulated — the mental link.

 That’s why I accused the Tardis when I woke again, my plan to leave already at the back of my mind, hidden of course. I accused her of manipulating me, of her pushing me too hard, of believing I wouldn’t care about the Doctor.

  
“So, what is it then, what do you have to decide?”

 “Decide?” I try to do as if I am not impressed and can’t be sure if he sees through me.

 “No one decides to come here for good food or the atmosphere. People come here to make a decision, over a drink and crap food,” he explains then. “They’re passing through.”

 “You passing through, also?”

 “No,” he answers without missing a beat. “I made my decision.”

 “What if I don’t want to decide?” I turn the bottle now around itself again and again.

 “What’s the reason?”

 “For not deciding?” I shrug, being annoyed. The least I want to face are my responsibilities. “I can’t win. And that feels unfair.”

That makes him chuckle, the whiskey whirling around in his mouth, “Sorry to break it to you, lass, but life never was fair. Never will be,” he takes another sip before continuing, “People always say; that there is something to win when you stand at a crossroad. The truth is, you can’t be sure, but there is always something to lose.”

 Why is it that I not want to decide? The fact that I know how the story will end? With every man, I seek and find, I get closer to the resurrection of the Doctor but also to that one cold day in December. While one story begins, another ends. That’s how it goes, and right now, I am not sure anymore if I can let that happen. Also, can I let the Doctor stay dead?

 “The moment is here,” Doctor Peter gets my attention back, “you have to decide!”

 “I don’t know how!”

 “Then come back tomorrow, have a drink or two, and the next day, and the next morning,” he shrugs. “Have a few drinks more till one day you won’t wake up anymore.”

 “That’s shit!”

 “See, there is always something to lose,” he shoves the drink away and glares at me. “A love. A life. A reputation. Sometimes you have to follow your heart, and sometimes you have to follow the rules. Otherwise, you end up like me. Following the sorrow. Staying here is not the way, lass.”

 He is right; I can’t stay here. After paying the beer, I will have nine cents and two pounds left to my name.

 A shadow that passes by rips me out of my hesitation. Doctor Pete is about to  leave, and I can’t let that happen, so I jump up, throw some money onto the table and catch up to him by the front porch, “come with me!”

 I know what will happen to him; death is already waiting to collect his soul. Five miles away from here is a technology that could save him. The Tardis wouldn’t be pleased, but what so ever.

 “No,” he places his hand softly on mine that holds his arm. “I can’t. You know that.”

 “Yes,” I reach into my pocket again, holding the device out to him, and he takes it.

 The sting goes by quickly and only betrays itself by a twitch of his eyebrows. He stares at the drop of blood leaking from his finger, not asking why.

 I reach for his hand, holding it between mine, exchanging a long look with him, “You’re a good man.”

 Four days later, he won’t wake up anymore, and I will be long gone.

 The Tardis takes my return with silence -- no grudge, not on any side.

 She doesn’t know I haven’t decided yet.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for following the story, Stick around, let me know what you think! Can't believe this one has already over 20 K words, there is a chance I end up with 30 k. Next chapter is in the making!


	9. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After your detour through Glasgow, you find yourself back in France again. You find Richelieu in a state you didn't expect. His life is in danger. Can you save him? And will you stay this time for longer? Forever?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long gap of posting, but I had to write around the final chapters for a bit before returning to this chapter, so i won't screw up the web of (fic)time. ;)
> 
> It's quite a long chapter, so I hope I can make up for it.

The Tardis lands and I feel the excitement rise. The week in Glasgow and the encounter with Malcolm Tucker and Doctor Pete, has not only steered me up emotionally, but it also separated me longer as planned from Richelieu. 

To be honest, it’s what I wanted to find out. How long can I be without Richelieu? Are those feelings of mine maybe just an error of my heart, an imagination? 

They are not, I know this now when the Tardis lands and my heart leaps in joy inside my chest. 

 

This time I don’t choose a cloak; I prefer a nice looking dress fitting for the time. Not my everyday wear, but I want to please Armand at least this time with my attire. Admiring myself with soft doubt in the mirror, I am almost convinced to “hear” the Tardis role her non-existing eyes over my behaviour. 

 

Opening the door, I take in where we landed. It’s the Cardinals bedroom, the same spot as the last time. I take it as a silent non-aggression pact that the Tardis keeps the distances short. She also has learned to take care I don’t wander off again.

Turning to the bed with a smile, I see Armand laying in bed. Quickly I wonder, sensing something is wrong, it’s not even afternoon. Instead, it seems to be morning, that’s what the long shadows tell me. It must also be in autumn. Yes, something isn’t right. 

 

Only then I recognise the figure coming through the door, quickly crouching beside the bed, handling something with Armand’s arm. 

 

Assuming an assassin, I lose all cautious and pace up to the man, “What is it, you think you are doing?” my hand grabs for his shoulder.

 

The man turns in shock; he is handling a needle, about to inject it into the arm of the sleeping Cardinal. I count one and one together; this man is not an assassin. It’s worse, a so-called physician of this time, about to bleed the Cardinal. 

 

“Who are you?” the man is outraged and confused. “How did you enter?”

 

I ignore his question and step closer, looking over Armand, “What’s with him?” Armand’s cheeks are hollow, and his skin is pale and thinner as I remember. He is groaning quietly in fever. “Are you going to bleed him?” What is this? The middle ages? “Stop it at once!” The man falls almost over when I push him ungently aside.

 

“Guard!” he then yells, holding the surgical needle as a defence in front of him. At once, a soldier of the red guard’s storms into the room. “Take her away; she is an intruder! An assassin probably, about to kill the Cardinal!”

 

“Ah! Why in heaven’s name, is everyone always believing I am an assassin? I am not!” I protest. “Stop what you are doing; bleeding will only weaken him more!”

 

“How dare you interfere! I know exactly what I am doing!”

 

I struggle with the smaller man for a short moment, “I absolutely doubt that!”

 

“Guard, I said, take her away!” 

 

Finally, I give the guard my attention, knowing very well, that if he takes me away, there is no Richelieu, who will save me. The Soldier is tall, fit and looks strangely familiar. He’d wrestle me down in an instant. It’s time for a Plan B; carefully, my fingers ruck up the skirt of my dress, so I can run back to the Tardis without falling. Seconds go by, long seconds that seem to be unreal. By now, the guard should have acted, but the man doesn’t move, and it makes the physician and me frown. 

 

“Guard, she is threatening the Cardinal’s life! Take her away!” 

 

He is not moving, “I have order not to touch her.” 

 

It’s us both cocking an eyebrow, “What?” 

 

Then I remember who the Soldier is. The one who once found me in the garden, pushing me ungently onto my knees in front of Richelieu. The one soldier I have met a couple of times already. 

 

He’s grim, a ruffian, and I can see he isn’t happy about the orders but knows what will happen to him, if he breaks them, “The Cardinal demanded not to let her come to any harm. I have an exact order. I lose my head breaking this order.” 

 

I frown at him and can see him look behind me, so I turn, finding a small piece of paper around 20 to 15 centimetres pinned to the wall. I walk over, getting closer. It’s a drawing done with a pencil. Soft but quite detailed. Me. It’s a portrait Richelieu must have drawn. 

 

“Not bad at all,” I didn’t know he can draw. I turn again, nodding toward the Soldier. 

 

“I have also ordered to obey your orders,” I am about to open my mouth, but he raises a hand, “as long as they don’t interfere with the countries state affairs.” By now, the guard wonders what makes me so unique. He can guess. 

 

The words make me laugh a little, “As long… Armand, I think you just invented the small text. Anyway, I want you,” I turn to the physician, “to stop what you are doing.” 

 

“But madam! He has to be bled,” he sounds like a life depends on it.

 

“The hell he has! stop it, or I let you remove,” on my word the guard steps forward grabbing the guy by the shoulder as a threat. 

 

Knowing he probably would end up in the Bastille by disobeying, he finally let’s go of Armand, making a gesture I shall try my luck. 

 

I press my hand on his forehead. “For how long is he in this state?” A heavy fever. 

 

“Since a week. He has a high fever coming and going.”

 

I have no clue what he could have, there are a couple of diseases that spring to my mind, but it needs further checks. So, I check his eyes,  look down his throat. Nothing. It could be anything, an infection maybe. Then I shove the blanket aside and open up his nightgown. Red spots. I look at the doctor in horror -- I have come across this disease while studying the 17th century, “Typhus?”

 

“Yes,” the man acknowledges my conclusion. 

 

I think it through. Undoubtedly, the Tardis can provide something, but I have another problem. A serious one, so I turn to the Soldier, “What year is it?”

 

The guard and the physician exchange quizzical looks, while I pray to God, it’s not 1642. “Speak up!”

 

“1632.”

 

Relief gets quickly ousted by shock, “Five years,” I whisper, turning back to Armand, reaching for his hand, “I let you wait five years and now?” Richelieu won’t die before 1642, so there is something I can do. “Out! The both of you. I also need hot water and fresh bedspreads! And bring hot soup!” 

 

I wait till they have both been out the door, then I walk over to the Tardis. After I have entered, I fear she will take off with me, but she doesn’t. By now she knows, I would go into a strike when she would rob me of my deserved time here in France. 

 

Pacing to the sick bay, I seek for her help, “There is something I can do right?” The Tardis hums. 

When I arrive in the sick bay, I find a technological wristband on a plate. “This?” She hums again. “Thank you.”

 

Fine for me, and with it I return to Armand, putting the wristband on. After pushing a button, the thing begins to wheeze and he to tense. A golden light erupts, encasing him what makes me step back. Whatever is happening, I hope it will free him from his pain and sickness. 

A minute goes by, then the light vanishes. Armand’s body tenses, he comes up with a loud gasp and then collides back into bed. The wristband falls off to the ground.

 

I check his pulse; it’s slow but steady. The stains on his chest have vanished. I assume he is now free of typhus and in recovery. When the servants return with the things I wanted, I send them away again. Change the bedspreads and Armand’s nightgown. I wash him too. Carefully, noticing he looks thinner as I remember him. 

 

After that, it gets late, and I feel exhausted - when I am not? The guard that has promised me his loyalty comes once again, asking for the Cardinals health, telling me the King will come to visit the next day. I report him, Richelieu will assumingly recover. 

 

Then, I fall asleep beside him, one hand on his chest, so I’ll note when something is wrong. 

 

The next morning I wake because my hand touches emptiness beside me. Imagine the worst I shoot up. The bed beside me is indeed empty, “Armand?” I utter shocked. 

 

A hum makes me turn, making me gasp in relief. Armand is sitting by the desk, drinking and eating a little, “Armand!”

 

He looks weak,  and alone standing up must have exhausted him to the limit, but obviously, hunger and thirst have pushed him out of bed. “Help me, will you?” he holds out his hand, wanting to stand up, but he almost collapses. 

 

Faster as I can imagine, I am by his side, “I have you.” I steady him and help him lay back into bed. “You should have woken me.” 

 

He smirks, tired but it urges sweet little crow’s feet wrinkles around his eyes that meld my heart a little, “you seemed deep asleep. I assumed you don’t get a lot of sleep so…,” he reaches for my hand. “You came back.” 

Pressing my hand to his lips, I sigh speechless. “That noise,” he points at the Tardis, “in my feverish dreams I heard it. After all this time.” 

 

“After all this time,” I repeat, it’s only a week for me, and I can’t imagine me to wait that long for some another without going insane. “You should rest. You had typhus, Armand.” 

 

“I had?” he wonders, raising an eyebrow. I give him an excusing smile, looking at the Tardis. He is smart enough to connect the dots himself. “Isn’t that meddling with time?” 

 

“No,” I answer quickly putting a bit of emphasis into it. A discussion about Cardinal Richelieu’s date of death might not amuse the Tardis nor me. “The King will come to visit you today.” 

 

He hears my tone of not liking it. Rest would be way better, let alone I’d like to have his privacy. 

Armand ignores it, and I can only roll internally with my eyes, “Good. There are important things that have to be taken care of. I need to see my secretary too.” 

 

“Now? “I turn, not hiding my surprise. He doesn’t need to remember me not to mother him, nor get involved in his political efforts. “Now. “I go and tell the guard in front of the door. 

 

Then I hand Armand some more food and water, it’s essential to get back to strength, and he obliges without arguing, “I see you…” he only wavers with his hand motioning up and down my dress. I didn’t think he would note. 

 

“I thought…” 

 

“I like it,” he says softly and then the secretary comes to his master. 

 

This is the end of our privacy, from then on states ministers, secretaries and other more or less important people come and go. Six hours straight Armand dictates text upon text, to be sent out to Spain, England and God knows where. 

 

I stay. Sitting by the desk, listening, cleaning a bit and making sure Armand eats and drinks. Over noon I am even able to make him lay down to sleep for an hour. Then the King announces his arrival. 

 

I keep quiet, and he mostly ignores me, only regards me with a quizzical look, then Armand distracts his attention while I remain sitting in my chair, doing as if I am reading, watching history happen right in front of me. 

 

Most amusing is that obviously, no one cares about the Tardis, it’s only the King, telling the Cardinal that his sense for modern art seemingly went a bit out of hand. I smirk into my book, and the topic is done. 

 

They discuss urgent matters about the Huguenots and Spain. Its the first time I see Cardinal Richelieu make politic, demanding the King to act upon his opinion. He is persistent, cunning and his knowledge about tactics in whatever matter exceed of course mine but also exceed most people at that time. I know how lucky I am to witness this, also its as if I observe a stranger — a cold, cruel and heartless machine. 

 

By now they stand by the table over a map of France and the Cardinal points at one point I can’t see. 

 

“My King,” Richelieu begins, his tone hard and energetic, nothing shows he has been almost dead, “walls can only be torn down, when there is a more stronger build and - and here I am very adamant - when we do build them, we build them for eternity.” 

 

My head comes up, as a thunder has struck, staring at Armand and the King. His words are the exact last words in the book I’ve read about him. I don’t realise I make a noise and suddenly I have the attention of King Louis. 

 

Unsure what to do, I jump up after a moment and bow, “I am sorry, Sire.” 

I learned it is always good to bow and excuse yourself even you don’t know what you’ve done wrong. 

The King examines me and then steps slightly into my distance, he notes the book I still hold in hand, “What are you reading?” 

 

Looking up again, my eyes flicker for a short moment to Armand. I’m afraid he could be angry, but he only encourages me to answer. 

 

“A book about French History,” I begin. “The Cardinal allowed me kindly to…” 

 

Louis turns to Armand, “Teaching French History, what else!” he laughs, and Armand nods. Then I am forgotten again, and with a sigh, I fall back into my chair, leaving the men to their discussions. 

 

The day goes by, and I get weary. I need to get out of here and get some fresh air, so in a moment of possibility, I slip out the door and go for the private gardens of Cardinal Richelieu. The guards give me a strange look, but they let me. They don’t even follow me. 

 

The weather is mild, and I ponder on what to do next. Armand seems busy with negotiations, writing threats and building France, and that’s none of my business, and as I don’t have another purpose, I think it might be better to leave with the Tardis again. As I don’t know when we would return, I feel this would be a step not coming lightly. 

 

“I have neglected you,” a voice gets me out of my thoughts. Armand stands by a bush, having watched me a while apparently. 

 

I smile, he is wearing only a black shirt, not the leather he usually wears when going outside, as he is still weak. I can see he still has wobbly knees, and I step up to him. 

 

“You shouldn’t be here. You should be in bed,” I steady him, and he chuckles gently. 

 

“You were gone, and I was in worry,” he explains, and I manoeuvre us to a stone bench. 

 

It’s me, chuckling, “Worry? About me?” it doesn’t fit into my view of him, but his expression is telling me something else. I blush, I have misjudged him. “You were!”

 

Dismissively he says while looking away, trying to rebuild my ‘low’ opinion of him, “Slightly.” He is sore. 

 

“I couldn’t imagine, your Eminence,” I say with a sigh. 

 

Besides the Doctor, Richelieu is one of the cleverest men I know, but I know exactly when to call him Armand or his holy title. I don’t look like it, but I know how to push buttons. 

 

No one should underestimate the Cardinal, that’s what I learn at this moment. Not his mind nor his ability to push his body beyond usual human limits. The man had had typhus, and still, he can almost jump up from the bench, his body tense, and make a sharp turn glaring at me. The button I push might be the wrong one. I raise shortly after, not breaking the eye contact. 

 

There is an absolute harmony between us and a certain incomprehension. That this man has higher aims I get, that he can sacrifice a lot for this aim, I know, but I can’t grasp how he does it. I would have too many sorrow over it. My own happiness would be too important for me to go the same length. 

Is that it, I wonder. While I am selfish, he is not? 

 

To assume Cardinal Richelieu is evil because he likes it is wrong. To think the Cardinal has sleepless nights over the dead people he has on his conscious also. The truth, as always lays somewhere in the middle. 

 

I doubted his affection; for that, I got the reaction. Maybe only because I questioned him in general -- I will never know. 

 

“I’ll return to my study,” he then announces after considering if he should scold me or not. I believe if he were with full health, he would have put up with me, so he leaves me behind, hurting me even more with his behaviour. Maybe that’s what is his plan. 

 

I let him have his fit and let have me my bad conscious about my opinion of him. There is a lot to talk between us, but neither of us has time for it. It’s too complicated anyway and too ordinary given that he is the first minister of France and I am a scampered time traveller from Cardiff. 

 

While strolling through the garden and the grounds I often reach for my phone, what isn’t there, of course, taunted to make a couple of selfies. Gosh, how about I tweet about it? The Tardis would make me regret it on so many levels. I also reach for the ring around my neck, playing with it absently.

 

After a few hours alone, it’s about to dawn, and I get hungry, so I decided to face the Cardinal again, hoping he hasn’t worked himself into total exhaustion in my absence. 

 

The guard in front of his door lets me in without announcing me, what is a bit unusual but it seems I am holding the rights as some house cats Richelieu possess - I can come and go as I like, as long as I don’t jump onto the table ruining political papers. 

 

The Cardinal still sits at his desk, about to seal a letter with wax, and I wait relaxed for his attention standing in the middle of the room. 

 

At least, so I can see, the carafe and the plate of food is almost empty. 

 

Armand is still busy with the letter, and I know that he is well aware of my presence, he just plays his little game with me. 

 

I huff exaggerated, “Five years, and all your are interested in is a war with Spain,” having his attention now I purse my lips smug. I can play this game too. 

 

He places the letter finally away and shoves back with his chair, “come here.” 

 

I cock an eyebrow but oblige, waltzing over to him, settling into his lap. His eyes travel over my dress, the bit of cleavage it has - I didn’t choose something indecent, just you know - his hand beginning to I caressing my face, trailing to the back of my head. 

 

A smirk escapes him, while his eyes flicker to my lips, “After five years you can be lucky when we make it to the bedroom.” What follows is a feverish kiss, that tells me the Cardinal is almost back to old strength. 

 

Indeed, we have a hard time reaching the bedroom, but after five years, he couldn’t care less.

 

Days go by with sweet kisses, gentle smiles but mostly with the Cardinal standing up early in the morning and going back to bed late at night, while I barely hear him leave the bed. 

Having too much of respect for his character and the work he does, I don’t dare to disturb him during the day and find distraction in reading, wandering the grounds and the buildings, or watching the guards at their daily training. I would love to ask for a horse and visit Paris, but Richelieu never would allow me without any protection, and I don’t want to make a fuss. Instead, I try to enjoy the quiet times without needing to persuade someone giving me their blood. 

One day I watch the guards training with bow and arrows shooting at some hay targets, and I can’t help it, but I’m hooked immediately. Waiting till the men are finished and leave for an early dinner, I watch a young man, cleaning up after them. I have seen him before, guessing him about 19 or 20. He is often around the men, doing servants jobs for them. Having a visible limp, it seems the reason he isn’t a guard himself because otherwise, he seems clear in mind and fit. 

While he picks out the arrows, I come closer, grabbing one of the bows that have been left behind on the ground, earning a suspicious look but not a word from him. He probably has noticed me as much as I did him. 

 

“Do you know how to use it?” I ask boldly. 

 

He keeps collecting the arrows, his eyes seeing the Cardinal’s ring around my neck, “I am just a servant.”

 

“That wasn’t the question,” I smile at him, hoping he will relax. “I’d like to try it, and was hoping you could show me.”

 

His eyes go wide in surprise, “you are a woman.”

 

“Congratulations,” it leaves my mouth quickly, “when you want to talk about women belonging into the kitchen, you are talking to the wrong girl.”

 

He chuckles, “I know how to use them.”

 

I smile back at him, giving him the bow, “show me then.”

 

The young man’s name is Étienne, and he tells me that a carriage had hit his leg when he was five years old. His father was once a musketeer before he died in the war a few years ago. Being a cripple in this time could end with not much fortune, so he got lucky when Captain of the Guards Treville, a friend of his father, advocated for him to work for the Cardinal and his red guards. 

 

Étienne isn’t a lousy bowman, so I notice when the arrow misses the bullseye only by an inch, “not bad for a servant.”

 

“You are very kind,” he holds the bow out and shows me how to take care of it. 

 

Naturally, we stay close aside each other, while he points out that I have to keep an eye on the target, while only looking subliminal concentrate on the arrow. The first arrow goes god knows where but the second hits at least the outer rim of the goal. 

 

“A good bowman needs to train hours, for months and years,” he explains quickly, going to collect the few arrows we use. When he returns, he is about to give me a smirk, when his face hardens and fright shows.

 

“What is it?” I ask, taking the arrows from him, but he only bows slightly, looking over my shoulder into the distance. Unsure what to expect, I turn finding the Cardinal standing in the roofed area that goes around the garden in one never-ending corridor. I see someone walk away from him, and I guess he has gone for a talk and a stroll, finding me then with Étienne practising with the bow.

 

The Cardinal doesn’t move, keeps standing there, and so I quickly turn to the younger, “don’t worry. Thank you, Étienne,” and give him back the weapons to walk across the garden to Richelieu. 

 

He doesn’t look happy; instead, he glances at the servant in the distance, probably plotting against him. I know the danger that is given.

 

“In case you are jealous,” I begin without resentment, “what would be way beneath your Grace’s dignity — there is no reason at all for it.”

 

Air gets inhaled sharply while his praying eyes lay now on me. At least he is now not happy about me talking like this to him, and not the boy anymore, but even he has learned by now, that I won’t let him rule me as he uses with others. 

 

As a peace offering, I smile at him, reaching for his hand, caressing it, “it’s just a young boy, who showed me how to use the bow. Might come in handy one day,” I kiss the tips of his fingers. 

 

“Still,” he only comments and takes my hand in his. There is a whole monologue he wants to give me about women not using a bow, me not being around this boy anymore and so on, but I raise a finger before he gets a word out.

 

“You’re neglecting me, being busy with King and country,” I say quickly, “What is fine, I’d never dare to stop you from your passion, but don’t expect me to keep sitting in your room doing nothing. I told you once, I tell you again, I won’t be degraded to one of your amusements. I am my own master, I do what I like.”

 

Richelieu stares at me blankly for a second and then reminds himself, that I am not a 17th-century girl, “I feared you would say that. You are aware someone else, would send you to the gallows?”

 

“I count on your mercy, your Grace,” I step into his way, getting closer. 

 

The way he looks at me, I sense he enjoys me being near him, but also can’t have it in public, because he is a man of God and all the commandments that come with it. He huffs once more and then grabs me by the arm, motioning me to a hidden bank in the garden that can be found between head-high hedges. 

 

“Stop doing that!” he then announces, and I do as if I don’t know what he means. “Using my title to … to …”

 

“...get what I want?” I offer. 

 

“Yes!”

 

“Did you just admit, a weak creature like a woman can manipulate you?” He groans in agony, becoming aware that I am about to begin to unravel his beliefs. “I am too much for you.”

 

“When I am honest, you are,” but he gives me a quick smile. 

 

For a moment I keep silent, finding it the right moment to tell him something that goes around my head since a few days now; “That’s bad, because … I wanted to tell you that this time I actually came here to stay.”

 

Armand leans slightly back, surprised, “and the Doctor?” After all this time, it’s this person he cares for most at this moment? “I mean, after all you told me, after all the effort you put into your mission.”

 

Turning unsure on the spot, I point into the direction of his bedroom, “It’s a Time Machine!” There is no reaction. “It can-”

 

“-I know what it can,” he interrupts, reaching out to me. His hands on my shoulders make me look at him. 

 

“I thought you’d be … pleased with my decision.” 

 

“I am.”

 

“Where is the problem then?”

 

He takes his time before answering, considering his words, as if he does not want to hurt me, “Because I don’t think it’s what you want.”

 

“I am not a child, your Grace,” I step back a little, knowing I overstepped my boundaries, quickly adding, “I am sorry.” 

 

Further words fail, and an explanation of why I am suddenly angry fails me. It annoys me that Armand is just right about it. 

Falling in love with him was a mistake. I know that now. He’d be busy ruling France, and I’d be busy becoming this one creature of his. I wouldn’t be able to stay too long aside all good intentions; my regret would drive me into madness and quickly back to the Tardis — back to my mission. 

 

“With every visit I pay you,” a burning feeling builds around my eyes, “our time becomes smaller and smaller. Till nothing is left. And when it ends, I can’t come back. Because...”

 

“... fixed points in time.”

 

I had turned away while talking to him, making it easier to speak at all. And when I hear those words, I want to propel around to be sure it is still Richelieu standing there, but I can’t! 

This voice, the way the words are spoken as if he knows all about its meaning! There I become painfully aware of how much I miss the Doctor — my friend, strange but loyal. His absence has taught me his value. And what it means to take responsibility for my actions. 

Do the means justify the end? Staying would mean the end of many things. Leaving would only mean a broken heart, and those, they say, heal quickly — or not at all. 

 

Hands get placed on my shoulders, heat radiating against my back. My ears hear the familiar rustling of his cloak. Armand makes me turn toward him, giving me a gentle smile. There, I finally understand that he can’t be with me because he is the man he is, and needs to be, but if he would be a simpler man, he’d made me stay. 

 

I also know now why I can’t stay. Not because of France or because of the mission. Every morning I would look into his face getting reminded of the man I let down. 

 

We return to his chambers in silence. Reaching the Tardis, Armand dares to touch the box with his left hand, feeling it out. There is a gleam in his eyes, and I am on the edge of telling him to come with me. 

 

Looking at him, looking at the box, I am sure he would love to have the device. Time and Space. He would be the one person being able to spread the name France all over it. Oh, this could end dangerously. 

 

Without having spoken more about it, he knows it’s my time to leave.

 

“Come back,” he turns his praying look at me. “I’ll make it up to you.”

 

I can’t imagine what he means, but the way he pulls me into a passionate kiss, I get an idea. The Tardis stretches the time in between our meetings, so I assume next time, it will be more as five years that have passed. “It will be years!” 

 

“For good things to come, it’s always worth the passing years.”

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does the drama go strong here?? At the moment I have planned like three more (longer) chapters, and then this story would be finished. But you know how it goes with plans sometimes. As I am leaving coming Wednesday to the UK for work I probably won't be able to post another chapter in the next two weeks, but in case I find free time I'll draft the last chapters as far as possible.
> 
> Let me know what you think, I can't get enough of your thoughts! I know, it's not historically accurate, but .. whatever is? Also, the "have to build stronger walls" is indeed a quote by Richelieu. It's in a 4 book strong biography (I haven't read yet completely)


	10. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How many more Doctor-Copies are left to find? How many tragic stories are there to discover? How much time is left to spend it with the Cardinal? The 17th century is a dangerous place and soon you'll find out how dangerous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update, I was super busy with work out of the country and last week I found myself in an horrible aftermath of the event I had to cover. But here is finally the update and good news, the next one or two chapters are already written and I plan to end this story this week - hopefully.

 

Then I meet a man called John Frobisher. It breaks my heart, and I don’t have to tell you about it. We all remember the one time the Doctor didn’t come to help, the one time men like Frobisher paid the highest price. 

 

When I take his blood sample, his eyes tell me he has made up his plan already, and he doesn’t even listen and understand what I am doing. Not that I talk about the Doctor, just about a medical inspection, some nonsense because I know he doesn’t listen. He is a dead man walking, and his children are, and afterwards, I leave quickly because, like so many others, I have tried to forget about this dark time on earth. 

 

“Why did the Doctor not interfere?” I ask the Tardis when I provide her with the blood sample. 

 

She doesn’t answer, not because she doesn’t want, but because she knows I know the answer. The Doctor can’t be everywhere. This planet is not mainly his responsibility; it’s ours. 

 

Fair enough. And then I go to sleep and Tardis let me rest as long as I want, knowing the dark thoughts that all those visits bring with need time to pass. 

 

Taking two days off gives my spirits a raise. Over the time of my travels, I have learned that some times can’t be changed. I have to accept what has happened a long time ago. My mission is another.

 

So, after hiding in the pool, the library and my room for 48 hours, I come back to the console room with much vigour, with much anticipation. It’s time to go back to France, and after we land, I find that the Tardis has already chosen and prepared my attire for the adventure. It makes me cock an eyebrow at the presented gear; she has never done that before. 

It’s once again a Musketeer cloak made out of fine leather. It’s clean and very fine looking, not racked up as the one I used to wear before. The colour is Tardis blue, and by God, it even has Gallifreian circles on the arm pieces. The rapier looks almost fancier, and when I take it in hand to feel the weight out, I know this is a blade of fine craftsmanship. 

 

“What’s going on?” I begin to take most of my 21st-century clothes off to put the 17the century on. “Making me the blue Knight riding into a glorious battle, or what?” I snicker. The Tardis keeps silent, and so I take what is given me shrugging the strange feeling in the back of my head off.

 

When I open the door, I find myself in the woods. Sun is shining; the birds are chirping, the smell of pines reaches my nose — summer is in full bloom. Then I spot a grey horse, in full saddlery, aside from the box — there I know something is up! I can smell the trouble already. Also, there is never a time where nothing is up, right?

 

Then, not far from me, I hear horses galloping through the woods, and before I can even move back or forth, I can see three men on horses pace not far away from me passed me. There must be a path, I figure, maybe 50 Meters from the point I am standing. They are fully dressed in red capes; they wear swords and pistols for sure — red guards of the Cardinal. 

 

I wouldn’t be worried about their being here when the Tardis wouldn’t have made a fuss about my gear and the horse. Plus something just feels off, and without pondering too long, I get on the horse and follow the group expecting them to lead me to Richelieu. 

 

It’s not long when I reach an opening, finding a noble estate. A gorgeous house, protected by a metal gate and high walls that were built to stop an intruder and so I assume this is some summer residence or hideout for the Cardinal or the King. 

 

Whatever it is, two dead guards lay in front of the wide open gate, and therefore I don’t stop just pace through it, finding myself in the broad area of the court. Near a side entrance, I spot another dead man and the three horses. Danger is afoot!

 

Worried, I jump off my horse and make the horses of the others move away with wild gestures. They scatter, making their way over to a larger green field, being now out of reach for an attempted escape. It’s strange, I think, where are all the people? I know that the Cardinal usually travels with his own royal household. Maids, servants, secretaries and of course guards, but where are they? 

 

Taking out my sword, I enter the house through a side entrance. Here and there I stop, listening, but there is no noise. After a while, I find the bigger hall, and there I find my first duel.

Very unhappy to see me, a red guard attacks me with a roar. Something is telling me, it wouldn’t help to show him the Cardinal’s ring would only encourage him more. The man his a foot taller than I, so I simply run the other way, back through the corridor I came. 

In the narrow and contorted hallway, I have better chances I figure, stepping into a corner, and when he passes, I can hit my aggressor with a massive statue over the head. With a thud, he goes down. He is bleeding but still breathing, so I let him lay where he is and only take away the weapons, throwing them through a door that looks like the entrance to the basement. With a loud clatter, they land down the stairway, and it makes me pray in silence no one has heard it.

 

I wonder what has happened that the red guards are attacking the court? Maybe they have stolen the uniforms? They only have been three, coming from outside. Armand has built an enormous regiment of red guards; he should be guarded by an equal mass of good men. Hearing noises finally in the house, I don’t have the time to elaborate on my questions and move on. Passing the hall, I walk through a couple of rooms all empty. No servant, no Cardinal. Are they hiding? It’s unnerving.

 

Then, I hear the noise of blades being crossed. A fight! I quicken my steps, taking my sword out once again to hurry into the direction I can hear metal clatter and groans. Getting to another room, I can see into another, finally finding the Cardinal, fighting with one of the attackers. 

Overcoming my slight shock, I pace through the door only to witness how Armand kills the man with a hard lunge right into his chest, an outcry of anger and rage escaping him, followed by an expression of slight joy on Richelieu’s face before the body collapses onto the floor with a last grunt. 

 

Out of breath, slightly sweaty, he then spots me, about to raise his weapon again, when he realises who I am. A surprised huff and half a smile escape him, “You?” 

 

We both know there is no time for great hellos at the moment. “There were three,” I explain getting up to him. He only has his rapier nothing more, so I grab my pistol handing it over to him. He can make better use of it, as I ever will.

When he takes it from me, our hands touch briefly, and I can feel, despite the evident past years, there is still a connection, “It’s loaded.” 

 

He smirks, “I know.”

 

His remark extracts an almost sappy smile from me, my eyes taking him in. He is nearly wholly grey now, only a few black strains of his hair curl here and there. Still the goatee, the fashion statement of his time. The fight has let his cheeks turn red, he looks vivid, but I know better. Richelieu has gotten old in the past week of my absence — it must be years for him “Where are your guards? And your servants?” 

 

“In exercise, not far from here. A man is already getting them,” he explains. “I only brought a handful of servants; they are probably hiding.” 

 

“We should barricade the door, and wait till backup arrives.” 

 

He nods, and I run back to the door, when he calls me once again, so I turn, “I am glad…,” still unable to express his feelings, but I know. 

 

I smile at him, “I am glad too, “then I turn, and the only thing I notice is a shadow moving through the door while I  run right into a blade that is presented against my chest. 

 

“Not so fast!” We can assume the man has waited behind the door for me to close it. 

 

There is no pain at first, just cold, and then an incredible warmth. An unpleasant feeling, nevertheless. Like when one is cutting their finger at a piece of paper — just ridiculously nasty. 

For a moment I am sure I can feel the sharp blade and maybe I do, because it goes right through my skin, through the muscles right between my ribs as if dipping into butter. 

 

A soft groan escapes me while I look up, finding a grim face staring down at me with success written all over it. It’s a face I am by now familiar with as with the one of Armand. The soldier that once caught me made me bow, the one that later told me he is ordered to protect me. We meet as much through times as I meet with the Cardinal, but now he is a traitor, and I wonder what has happened to make the most reliable guard to an assassin. 

 

The weapon has entered my body right underneath my still-beating heart, and it feels like I can feel it slide past it there. Not a hit that will result immediately into death, but crucial enough and I can feel my legs weaken without my consent. My hands have reached out to the arms of my murderer, trying to find a bit of hold, while my body is like hanging on a thread, only standing upright because of the knife that sticks inside my body. 

The soft pain develops into something harsher when he detaches the blade from my body with a rough movement — a silent gasp, a calm breath and still the look of incomprehension. Then I can feel life or conscious leave my body. I am about to hit the ground. 

 

That’s it! The end of the line. First, I have Armand in mind, then the Doctor. I’ve failed. 

 

“Doctor…,” I utter about to slip to the ground, “Doctor!” I land in a puddle of my blood, and the next I know is that I hear the shot of a gun and an unclear vision of the man who attacked me dropping dead beside me, a bullet in his head. 

 

Then, that’s it. Everything goes silent and dark.

 

It’s not the end, though. At least it doesn’t feel like it. No heavenly gates, no burning hell, just a feeling of being carried away and placed onto a soft bed. Voices, many voices talking all jumbled, someone is pressing a cloth against my chest, there where I bleed out my life. 

 

Maybe souls don’t leave the body when it dies, I wonder, perhaps we are doomed to exist forever in this dead shell. With the thought of it, my body starts to rebel. Shaking and trying to get away from death, my body spasms. People are holding me tight around my hands and feet. It hurts, everything hurts, and then I finally lose all my senses. 

 

If this is death, then it’s like sleep. Eternal sleep filled with nightmares

 

It must be the middle of the night when I shoot up with a gasp right out of a horrible dream. I can’t think I can’t breathe, and there is cold sweat on my forehead. My heart is drumming against my chest so hard I fear it will burst out of it. 

 

I roll out of a bed that tells me nothing and end up with a thud onto the cold stone ground. My head is pounding, trying desperately to figure out what has happened. I am wearing a nightgown, my looks fly hastily through the dark room, trying to figure out where I am. My memory lacks.

 

There is a thunderstorm outside. In the distance, lighting lids the room here and there for a moment, making it all look bizarre, and I begin to fear I am still caught in that nightmare of mine. Rain hits the windows hard; soon, we will be in the centre of the storm.  A blinding flash of lightning makes me startle, and it also makes me remember something. My hand reaches for the spot under my breast. There should be a wound, but there is none. 

 

I stagger onto my feed, without any orientation and fall more through the room I am in. A chair is in my way, and I am about to fall over it. Instead of hitting the ground, something holds me. 

Someone, “It’s okay,” a familiar voice but it needs more reassurance till I get a grip again. “You are safe; everything is okay.” 

 

Armand grabs me by the shoulder, making me turn to him, making me face him, and when the next lighting goes, I recognise his face. It seems distorted through the game of light and shadows, but I know it is him, and it makes me calm down. 

 

“What… What has happened?” again, my hands search for the deep wound I should have. 

 

“Come here,” he leads me to the chair I’ve kicked over, “I explain.” 

 

I sit down, suddenly shivering, besides I remember a hot day before. It must be summer. The Cardinal sees and reaches for a blanket putting it around my shoulders before walking around the room to light a few candles while I watch him distraught. When he is finished, he goes over to a desk where a little wooden box stands. He opens it and takes something out and presents it to me.

 

Taking it from him, I need a moment, then I remember. Not that long ago, I’ve used it myself, healing him from Typhus. It’s the technological wristband the Tardis provided me once with. After using it, I can’t remember having it taken back. 

 

“I found it under the bed one day,” he reads my questions, “and kept it.”

 

In horror, I look up, only having in mind what misusage he could have done with it — He reads that from my looks. 

 

“Don’t worry,” he assures, “I hadn’t used it, not before you arrived. When I saw that wound, I knew you would either die or… so I put it onto you and… “

 

Now it gets clear to me that the nightmare I had wasn’t a dream. It was real. I remember the blade parting my flesh, and the palpable feeling makes me shudder, “you saved my life.” 

 

Armand looks down on me in surprise. We both grasp it’s something he doesn’t hear that often. 

 

“Well, I couldn’t…,” hearing the slightest of mischief, that quickly turns into a lower tone, full of emotions, “I couldn’t allow you to die.” 

 

I give him a shy smile. Why do people want to hear ‘I love you’ so much, I wonder, when there are so many beautiful possibilities to say it differently? 

 

Another lightning flashes through the night.  Armand stands in front of me looking down at me, and I look up at him. The nightmare is forgotten now, and the only thought I have is all about him. How much I yearn for him. The feeling of mine, I can see, it mirrors in his eyes. 

 

The blanket slowly falling from my shoulders, the cold has left me, and heat is taking over. In the background, a heavy rushing the rain makes — the cacophony of a warm summer night. 

 

With a single leap, I am at him, my hands around his neck, my lips at his, pressing against him. There is maybe no tomorrow I think, and that’s why I won’t hold back. Neither will Armand, clasping his hand around the back of my neck, the other at my hip, tucking up the nightgown searching for my warm flesh. 

 

It’s been too long for both of us, no matter the way we experience time. Also, we both know that any of these moments could be the last. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I admit this one is a bit short-ish looking at others, but I think it bears all the essential this story needs. Let me know what you think!
> 
> Thanks for the read! Keep an eye out for a soon-ish update!


	11. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When traitors get caught, we all know what Richelieu will do with them. It leads to fatal decisions and many revelations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a very long chapter, and I hope you will have fun reading it!

We get woken by a harsh knock at the door and a voice that is calling for the Cardinal. Armand gives me a short glance, and then jumps out of bed, wrapping a gown around himself, to find the reason for the disturbance.

“What is it?” he glares at the red guard, whom I can see from a distance.

“Your Eminence, we found the traitors!”

For a second, he turns back to me, “How many?”

“It’s two, your Eminence,” the guard explains quickly, “they belong to our own men!”

 

The sentence not only sends anticipation through the Cardinal but also through me because I can very well imagine what will happen next.

 

“Let them bring into my study!” Richelieu demands before closing the door about to get dressed. 

For a moment, I hesitate, then I grab my shirt and hop out of bed, “What are you going to do with these men?”

He doesn’t care about looking at me while shoving over his clothes, but he grants me with his patience to explain to me his plans, “They’ll get interrogated, and then they get what they deserve.”

 

“And that is?” I know what it is, but I want to hear it from him.

 

Cardinal Richelieu has dressed completely, only placing the cross around his neck, before turning to me, not making a move to tell me. I ask again, harsher this time.

 

It’s not only his patience I am testing, but I can also see it the way he steps up to me, one finger pointing into the air, “Traitors deserve no mercy, no fairness and of all, they do not deserve life!”

 

He gives me a frown, before he turns dramatically, his cloak brushing like a razor blade against my arm. The door goes shut behind him with a bang.

At first, I stare at the door, and then I remember the dialogue I had with Armand when he did ask me about his place in history. About what people, about what I think of him. What I had declined to explain before, because I knew it would only bring sorrow, I have to face now.

 

The Cardinal will kill those men, without a blink, and I know this is history, this is what will be given to traitors and assassins in this time. But it is something I don’t want to have happen around me -- around the person I love.

 

To hell with history, I decide, and get into my clothes before I follow the Cardinal. It’s only minutes, but when I arrive in the study, the two men have bloody faces and lay on the ground kicked by another of Richelieu’s guards. Richelieu looks at me when I storm through the door, and I look at the prisoners, the blood that is dripping onto the cold stone floor.

When I do not react, he decides to ignore me and moves on with his interrogation. He motions one of his guards to make the men come back upon their knees. The grip is relentless and harsh.

 

The Cardinal steps forward, “I want names!” the answer is blood being spit in front of him. Without delay, Richelieu hits the man with the back of his hand as hard as he can. It makes the kneeling man fall back to the ground. Blood being spattered across the stone floor. “Names or I let them break every bone in your body, bit by bit!” he turns to the other one. The man is scared, panting hard, one eye of his is about to swell shut. Without asking him anything, Richelieu motions his guard to do something. It’s a silent understanding, a routine — it must have happened so often before.

 

The arms and hands that are bound together behind his back get bend upwards. Higher and higher, till pain makes him scream, till tendons are about to burst.

 

I can’t take it anymore, “Stop it!”

 

Indeed the soldier lets go, but it is owed my pretentious interference as the meaning of my words. It also owns me the fury gaze of the Cardinal, who whirls around and steps up to me. He is about to grab me by my neck, but I can dodge it, holding my hands up — about to become fists — in defence. I’ll fight if I need to.

 

Forgotten the tender night we spent, the whispered words of adoration we had exchanged.

 

The gesture of mine, and his, the situation we are now in, is putting us on different sides. We know this is the moment we have to decide what we want. Armand frowns at me, aware of the actions he wanted to take against me, aware he has been let on by his fury nature. Aware I am seeing what he did hide from me all these visits long.

 

“My Lord?” one of the guards asks, making Armand raise a hand toward him, his face still looking at me.

There are too many parties in the room, too many possibilities, too many emotions. For once I can see that Richelieu doesn’t know what to do.

 

The words of Doctor Pete come to my mind, ‘See there is always something to lose.’ Only now, I understand them fully.

 

“This is not right,” I whisper. It won’t have an impact. Even he spares them; he will kill others.

 

He then turns back to his men, “Get them out of here, and lock them in,” for a moment, I believe that will keep the men save, but of course it isn’t so, “And guard, no mercy, I want names!”

 

They take the men away, and only when the door is shut and we are alone Richelieu turns back to me. He is angry with me, and — way worse — disappointed, “How dare you come in here, woman! Interfering with state affairs! That’s treason on its own!”

 

There are a few meters between us, and I make sure those meters don’t get too small, “I don’t care about your state affairs, or about treason. I am not your King’s peasant!”

 

It’s something he can’t understand. The importance of those matters and I trample over it. He has underestimated me — or is it called overestimated? “Was there ever anything you actually cared about then?”

 

It’s a revaluation of our relationship.

 

“No matter how I answer, you won’t believe me, will you?” His silence is a betrayal. “The Doctor -”

 

“- To hell with your Doctor!” he is so fast, that I find myself pressed against the wall his hand finally there where it wanted to be earlier. The hand is not in a grip yet; it’s only his body weight pressing fully against my chest.

 

My hand gets around his forearm, not because I want to take his arm away, I couldn’t even, he is too strong for me. It’s my way of showing no weakness. I should be afraid, maybe, but I can’t, and I don’t want to. Yes, there is a slight fear about my well being, the danger I will fail in the end on my mission for the Doctor, but above all, there is anger and truculence.

 

“No,” I pant, “to hell with you.” Words can cut like a knife; since I travel with the Doctor, I know about that very well. They can save you, can encourage you, but they also can destroy everything you love.

 

Armand du Plessis Duc de Richelieu lets go of me, fully aware of what I have just done to him.

 

“Those men attacked not only me, but they also attacked the stability of France. The man I pledged my duty to, the King, they attacked all this,” suddenly all verve in his figure is gone, the anger in his eyes too, when he turns back me, “and everything I love!”

 

Oh, yes, words can truly set your heart in pain.

 

“Those men, have done you nothing,” I want to cry, “you’ve killed the main attacker.”

 

“I let them get away; they come back one day. It will encourage others. Those are dangerous times, I can’t expect you to understand,” he won’t budge.

 

So won’t I, “Yes, times in which power and violence suppress people, will always be more dangerous as times in which great men, will reign with mercy and patience.” It’s a naive belief.

 

“Those times you talk about, I envy you for them,” he comes closer again, reaching for my hand. “The times I live in, don’t work like your future. I am sorry,” he gently touches my cheek, “the men will be executed before the evening.”

 

That I look at him in shock and disappointment, he has anticipated, and when I turn away from him, he doesn’t hinder me. It’s time to leave. Richelieu won’t stop me. It’s a problem lesser when I am gone; then he can go back to ruling the country or whatever.

 

I stop at the door frame, turning back to him, “everything you love? A man like you doesn’t even know what love is.”

 

Does he feel bad? Sad maybe? Is his heartbroken now? Questions I ask myself while riding back to the Tardis, aside I certified him not to have a heart. There won’t be answers. It’s not only time to leave, but time never to return.

 

When I am back inside the Tardis, I get rid of the musketeer uniform and all the gear that comes with it. I store it in the farthest closet, hoping never to see it again. Taking off the heavy leather is making me expect, it will also take the heavy burden off my shoulders, but when I am back into my denim and a beige-coloured shirt, it doesn’t feel like a relief.

 

Weary, I sit down onto a chair in my room, staring into nothing, letting memories revisit me. I think about my youth, the times I spent with family and friends, I think about the day I met the Doctor, and it stings in my heart. The Doctor, my friend, unable to help me at this moment.

 

_‘There is always something to lose.’_

 

I am about to lose everything and already see myself back in that bar, taking over the bench Doctor Pete used to sit, drinking pint after pint. What a stupid idea, it crosses my mind, and because I am not sure if this thought is my own or the Tardis playing her games with me, I look up listening into the depth of the ship. Nothing. No noise, no buzzing or wheezing.

 

Shouldn’t we be back in the Time Vortex? To look for another Doctor-copy? Indeed, nothing. I begin to wonder what is wrong. I slip my trainers on and wander through the corridors, expecting someone or something to jump at me. Maybe we are under attack?

 

Reaching the console room, I find the colours of the Tardis, the lights blinking, unusually different. They are low, redder and not only the usual blue. My fingers trail over the railing, while I make my way to the console, looking around suspiciously, “What? Did you install mood lighting now?”

 

She only flickers, then nothing.

 

“Shouldn’t we be on our way? Back in the Vortex?” Her behaviour is unusual. The monitor begins to blink, so I walk over, checking what she wants me to see. It’s a spreadsheet, with names on it. Names I know, men I met. It’s a list, and we have worked through this list. There is just one blood sample missing. Of course.

 

A laugh escapes me that is owned by my stupidity and over-emotional reaction earlier. I made a vow to my own heart not to revisit Cardinal Richelieu but missed out on getting the blood sample. “Listen,” she won’t be happy to hear about this, “can’t we just skip him?”

 

The whole room, all the lights go on in full power for a second, blinding me. It’s noisy beeping, and the lights around the balustrade go wild like an old vinyl record. That’s the Tardis having an outbreak with its unreasonable child.

 

“I mean, come on, what’s the worst that can happen?” we probably both wish it could be that easy. The Tardis protests in my head, telling me to get a grip. It’s not about the Doctor missing a finger then; it means bringing the Doctor back as a whole different person. I’d be fatal.

 

“What trade has the Cardinal the Doctor needs?” I protest now. “In my eyes, he only won’t be as cruel as the Cardinal is. It’s a win!”

Naturally, I am not reasonable. I have a broken heart, broken expectations, and the Tardis knows.

 

The book won’t be ever complete when not all pages are brought back. The Doctor can’t be who he is, without the traits the Cardinal’s blood carry.

 

_Just because you see the cruelty in a man, doesn’t mean it’s the quality he will give to the Doctor._

 

“I saw no other traits!”

 

_That’s why you made me come back again and again because there was just cruelty?_

 

“I hate you!”

 

_Dito._

 

Steadying myself with hands on the console, I let my head hang down, thinking about the possibilities more I try to figure out how I did end up in this dead end. I still wear the ring, around my neck on an old clock chain I found. It’s swinging gently from left to right, “I meddled with time, didn’t I? So, that’s the consequences the Doctor used to talk about.” The web of time. Ripples. Tidal waves!

 

“I can’t go back!”

 

There is a knock on the door.

 

_I don’t think you have._

The Tardis is as surprised as I am.

 

I grab for the monitor. Richelieu. “Armand?”

 

He knocks again, stepping back a bit, looking at the Tardis, waiting for something to happen. I can see his horse in the background; he did follow me alone.

 

Unsure what to expect, I go to the door, slowly opening it. He is about to leave again, obviously having no patience at all, but when he hears the doors creaking, he turns looking astonished at me.

 

Half inside, half outside, I don’t know what to do, and when Armand decides to step forward, I choose to leave the box and step forward also. Looking around, I see he indeed came alone. No guards, no security.

 

“Your Grace?”

 

Hearing his title, he hesitates for a second, giving it a fleeting smirk, “I was afraid, you’d be gone, before I arrive here,” he says, pointing at the Tardis. He is still in awe of it.

 

“Why would you?”

 

His left arm hangs in the air a little, before he rolls up his sleeve, “Because you forgot something important.”

 

The gesture makes me shudder, it makes me aware that I also underestimated him, and my hand lands on my chest, the ring of his caught underneath, “But you said-”

 

“-I remember what I said,” he smirks slightly, “and still mean it. I don’t care about your Doctor,” his words make me frown, “I care about you.”

 

Who is cruel now?

 

Armand still presents his arms, so I walk over to him, getting the device out of my pocket and are about to reach for his arm when I stop midair. Am I allowed? In fear, I look at him, and he nods encouragingly. The skin is soft and delicate, white as paper and his veins run as blue lines visible underneath it.

“You won’t even feel it,” I say and press the little gadget against his skin. He observes.

 

“That’s it,” I say, but haven’t let go of his arm yet.

 

“Much ado about nothing,” he comments with a smile when I look at him nodding. Then I let go, and he rolls down his sleeve.

 

The device vanishes back in my pocket. For a moment we just stand there waiting for the other to say something. It’s my turn to say something, but now after the mission is complete, I feel as if someone has put me to a stop, I wanted to avoid so desperately. The universe defeats me.

 

Richelieu waits another few seconds, granting me with the gracious offer to finally speak up, but when nothing comes out of my mouth, he only nods, disappointment mirroring in his eyes. Maybe, after all, I indeed only came for his blood.

 

I watch him go to his horse, mounting. Then, as if a ban is broken, a thousand words come to my mind. Stumbling forward, I am still unable to speak up.

 

Armand gives me a frown, waiting, and then shakes his head and wants to give his horse the signal to ride back, but then something comes over him, and he turns to me once more; “When you step into your box, have you ever wondered what that does to the people you leave behind? Have you?”

 

I want to tell him that of course, I have, but he doesn’t let me — for reasons.

 

“I don’t mean what happens to them. I mean what it did to me to see you go away. Again and again.”

 

It breaks my heart. So I let him continue.

 

“How much time was it for you between our visits? Days, weeks at most. It was years for me. Long years, in which I should have done what? Wait? I’m a power-driven, merciless politician — for a reason, and that you know too; I didn’t have another option.

 

“Without me, there would be others, crueller, but not able to rule this country as it should be governed.

 

“There were conflicts to fight, a country to rule, and you don’t do this with mercy. Mercy would have cost my life. Would have meant not to see you again,” he sees me stare up at him, breathing heavy, keeping silent, “you have absolutely no idea what this box is doing to those who are left behind, do you?”

 

The Tardis is a gift, making the impossible possible. It gives one the possibility to see the universe and still be on time for another occasion. It spares the Doctor from waiting and boredom — It saved me the years to wait.

 

He doesn’t wait for an answer and spurs his horse on. This means two things, it’s either me going back to the Tardis never coming back again, letting this end on bad terms or finally getting some courage together and do follow him. The Duc of Richelieu means — after all — too much to me. That’s why I run to my horse, swing myself into the saddle, grab the reins and follow. I have not only learned to fence, but I have also learned to ride a horse and so I quickly catch up with Armand.

 

Hearing the gallop of my horse, he slows down with his, watching me bring myself into his way.

 

“You are right,” I begin carefully. “I’ve damned you to wait for me! It’s not like I wasn’t aware of it. When the time span got bigger and bigger, I felt not only guilt. I felt horrible. You thought me dead at first and then you probably just understood you only had to wait long enough. I can only imagine the daily disappointment of me not being there. But if you’d ask me to switch places, I’d be honest; I wouldn’t want to be in your position, but you also wouldn’t want to be in mine.”

 

Armand considers my words, tries to find the trap in it and then gives up, “why not?”

 

Just for once, I am more intelligent as the mighty Cardinal?

 

“Because you had a life with me. For you, I was there in the last two decades. I just had a couple of days, as you said, weeks at most,” I try to tell myself that the end of this story is not as close as it is. “The rest of my life, the only thing I can do is stand over your grave.”

 

Sometimes Salvation and Damnation are the same thing.

 

Cardinal Richelieu is no one for having spent much time thinking about his own death aside, always having the future in mind. The future of the country. The future of his well-being, but not his inevitable death, however, that will be. Simply because there was no reason, when the mark would be carved deep enough in the stream of history, he could die without caring about it, he would have reached his aim. There never had another thought about it. He knows he is not popular as a human being, so why care what others think of him — and then there is me, telling him it would be me, a single human being, missing him. That’s nothing in relation to France. Why should he care?

 

“Look at me,” Armand points at himself. “I’ve become an old man, but you, not a day older as the first time I met you all those years ago. I still remember your grin, when you tricked me into firing that pistol. I told myself you only came back for my blood, but when you declined…”

 

His curls now wholly grey, the thin wrinkles around his eyes have become deep lines. The man in front of me has visibly aged. I had ignored this because he never looked any different to me since day one.

 

Finally, I understand, “So, this is how it feels,” I tell myself, wrinkles on my forehead, trying to fight off the lump in my throat and the feelings that come with a message of final circumstances.

 

“What?”

 

My impression softens when I meet his quizzical look. The luxury of weeks and months to work through all the stages of denial, grief was not given to me. “The Doctor, a being of old age, he sometimes tells me about long gone Companions. He is always funny about it as if they are all still out there, but the truth is, there is no happily ever after for the Doctor. He sees them come and… .”

 

Richelieu wouldn’t be the man he his, when he wouldn’t understand the overall meaning of my words.

 

“Tell me,” he brings his horse closer to mine. “How much time is left?”

 

“Not much. None to be honest. Your blood sample was the last I needed and when I return to the Tardis...”

 

“You are off to save the Doctor,” he finishes for me, showing he has the stronger will of us. I nod, and he can see how it’s pressing me down because I let him see it. “It’s the right thing to do.”

 

“Is it?” of course it is, it’s just one of those questions because I don’t want to let go.

 

“Your Doctor, is like France to me, there is no greater love for us. Even we know we never will get paid back. We pay the price of a broken heart, of being cruel willingly because we know it’s for a higher cause.”

 

It’s his advantage to have worked through all those emotions over the years, while I am still at the beginning with it all. Wisdom comes with age, indeed.

 

I descend from my horse and walk a few meters on the path that leads through the forest. One mile to the right is the Tardis waiting, one mile to the left, is Armand’s residence. Hearing Armand descends from his horse, I turn around visibly in turmoil, “I don’t want to go!”

 

Afraid I might collapse, Richelieu hurries up to me, grabbing me by the arms. His glance seems harsh at first as if no emotion in this world could ever hurt him, but I know the truth. I’ve seen behind the once lifted curtain, I see him crumble, but he keeps together for the sake of us both.

Then he kisses me with force, almost painful is his grip but I don’t care. It’s his way of clinging to this bit of reality as much as I do.

I must have groaned softly, because his hands loosen around my arms, embracing me now and holding me close while I do the same, still kissing.

 

In the distance, there are noises to hear. Horses are galloping, a track of men pacing through the forest. It must be the King with his court, Richelieu had sent out a message about the attack to him, and the King holds dear two things, the hunt and his first minister.

 

“You need to go now!”

 

“I’ll never see you again!” I cry out, while it’s my hands now that come around his arms in a tight grip.

 

We both hear the horses in the distance come closer.

 

“Trust me,” he is pressing me for leaving. “For once trust me that I know about the future.”

 

That’s easier said than done, but there is no other way as to agree — even there is a tremendous amount of doubt.

 

He kisses me one last time, and then we separate. Quickly he spurs his horse making it race back to his place, and I make mine pace to the Tardis. The colonus of riders and horses only misses us by moments.

 

Within minutes I reach the Tardis and hurry inside. Having awaited my return, the Tardis has opened the slot for the device already. She eagerly awaits the last blood sample. As I know she will quickly process the data and then bring us back to the coordinates the Doctor rests in his grave, ending this adventure at once, I hesitate. Would the Tardis be a human being she would probably topple me over to get hands-on the device, so she is dammed to wait.

 

How can Richelieu know about the future, I wonder reaching into my pocket. And then into the other, and also the back pockets of my denim. Panic rises inside me, and within the Tardis, the lights begin to flicker.

It can’t be, can it? Erratic I search my pockets, without any result. The device is gone.

 

“I don’t know,” I exclaim, answering the Tardis. “I had it. I put it in my pocket, I swear!” I am willing to strip naked to prove it’s not there, when, “Oh!” of course. “What a clever…,” I step up the Tardis console, placing a hand on the metal,” Sorry, old girl,” she vibrates in protest, “my boyfriend is not only a famous ruler of the country,” I can’t suppress a proud grin,” he is also a talented pickpocket!”

 

The Tardis dies a little inside while I pad the console in sympathy.

 

 

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have finished this story by now, it only needs posting, so expect "incoming" over the next few days. Whoever is still reading this, thank you so much!
> 
> I also want to point out two quotes I shamelessly stole. One is "Salvation and Damnation..." it's a quote by Stephen King, used in an episode with Ten .. with the monsters that absorb faces !? And the other quote is, of course, the "I don't want to go!" Ten's last words.


	12. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is no more Doctor Doppelgaenger to find. There is just one blood sample left. This will be your last visit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I let the last chapter end on ... good spirits, but we all do know how this story will end eventually, don't we?

Between our goodbyes in the forest and the date at which I step out one last time here in France, lay not more than three months. 

 

I am back in Paris at the court, back in Richelieu’s private chambers. The Tardis has landed in his study, which is empty. Looking at the fireplace, I can tell there hasn’t been a fire for a while. A few papers lay unsorted on the desk, the candle hasn’t been replaced, and it’s freezing cold. God knows when the study has been used the last time. Peering out the window, I can see the first snow falling in the garden about to lull the court into an elusive silence. It’s about to get night and winter is about to settle in.  

 

This won’t be a comfortable visit, I tried to prepare myself for it in the past 24 hours, but nothing actually can one prepare for this last visit — the grand finale.  

 

Like a cat, I stroll through the small corridor that connects the study with the bedchamber, afraid to wake a servant, worse a guard. But not only the busy days in the study are over, but also the busy days of the red guards. Soon they will all be attached to the King’s guard, changing from the red uniform to another colour.

 

The door makes no noise when I open it, and it makes me wonder because it’s such an old door. Shouldn’t old doors make squeaking noises? Of course not, because at this moment, the door is not old at all. It will be one day and then comes the sound. 

 

 It’s my brain asking weird questions, trying to distract me from what is coming. 

 

The next room I enter is lit by a few candles, giving the shadows grotesque lineaments. In the air hangs a strange smell — a faint mix of herbals, medicine, sweat and death. 

 

The bed is still there where I remember. As it’s so dark, I decide to light another candle. When the match flares up, I can see the expected lay in the bed. There is not much movement, just gentle flat breathing, indicating that there is still some life in this room. As carefully as I can, I slowly sit down onto the bed. 

 

Armand seems deep asleep, so I let him. He is packed into a good pair of thick blankets, even wearing a nightcap, so he keeps warm and comfortable. It has its reasons. Sickness as typhus and his collapsing lungs take their toll on him. All his life the Cardinal never was a 100% healthy but a lot of times 100% sick. The times he seemed ecstatic and fit, he often hid minor sickness and pain, throwing himself into work. 

 

While I watch him sleep, he suddenly takes a deep breath, stirring around in his sleep. A dream, and so I reach for his hand that is cold. His boney fingers betray that all his reserves are gone. 

My touch gets a reaction, a soft press, “You came,” his voice is raspy and weak. 

 

I smile, “You took great care of it that I would.” 

 

Our eyes meet, and I can see the proud smile that mirrors in his eyes. He takes my hand to press it against his mouth, giving my fingers a gentle kiss, “it was selfish to do, but I wasn’t ready to let go of you. Help me, will you?” 

 

Quickly I go and get another pillow and help him to sit in an upright position. Then I go and throw a couple of logs into the fire.

 

“You look tired,” I offer with a smile, and he smiles back almost in mischief. 

 

“I am dying,” he corrects with a sad timbre. The words bring tears to my eyes, and I quickly brush them away. He knows since a while and has taken care of his successor. His work is done, every fail that will come afterwards can’t be blamed on him. Will it be a success, they are going to say it was his hard work in the past that began to bloom. 

 

We both watch the fire in silence, getting hypnotised by the dancing flames, trying to decipher the erratic pattern and trying to find meaning in it — my hand in his.

 

I mean, what is left to say? He is dying, and I am going to save the Doctor. Happy end? 

There is a question I have to ask myself, which I tried to postpone till the Doctor is back, but watching the flames the issue surfaces. 

 

What do I do after this story ends? Am I staying with the Doctor? Am I going back home? To do what? Grieving over a four volumes massive biography about Cardinal Richelieu, while regretting to let the Doctor go and with him the possibility to visit Armand once more? Ignoring that there always will be the web of time, it’s possible destruction when I would return? Doubtless, when I study the books in the library long enough, I can find a way, a spot in time where it won’t hurt. At what costs? What would that do to me? 

 

It doesn’t matter what I do; there will always be regret. 

 

Armand doesn’t watch the flames anymore; he watches me what I only notice after a while, “They told me names, just you know.” 

 

I need a moment to understand what he means. Then I remember the two traitors. Unsure why he is mentioning it I give it a sarcastic huff. 

 

“Afterwards, I let them go.”

 

“Of course you—” I walked right into his trap, “You did what?”

 

“I let them go,” he repeats, and I can hear that tiny bit of smugness he usually inherits. That’s definitely a trait of the Doctor too. 

 

My hands rub together, “Why? To impress me? It’s why you are telling me this, hours before…,” for a second I forget the man will be history tomorrow, yet I can’t get the feeling out of me he wants to have a last row — just for the sake of it. “What’s your aim? Making me look foolish and wrong? Making you look good? Cardinal Richelieu, the merciful? Did you sent out that memo already?” 

 

He laughs; it hasn’t happened often that I was able to amuse him that much, “The problem is that no one can impress you.”

 

I bow slightly toward him, whispering, “When you are trying to make compliments, it’s not working.”

 

He grabs my hand again, kissing it once more, “What I want to say is that you can’t be impressed, because you do not want to be impressed. You want to be heard, accepted but not impressed,” he explains statesmanlike but also with a soft tone in his voice, because he knows me better as I thought. “That’s why your Doctor chose you because you can’t be impressed. You are so much more!”

 

How can a man like the Cardinal give such a speech at such a moment, making me almost cry out in pain as my heart is about to break? 

 

Death can make any person become the better version of themselves and so Armand motions me to come to lay with him, my head resting in his lap he lets his fingers stroke through my hair. Chills run down my spine, my body relaxing, and I let out a long stream of air, I didn’t know I held back. It feels almost domestic, something we never had much time for. 

 

“I never thought I would say this, but…,” he breathes heavy, and I can hear his heart beats wildly, “I regret sending you away, all those years ago when you wanted to stay.”

 

“We would have regretted it if I had stayed,” I turn to face him. 

 

“Yes,” he nods, and I bend to kiss him. “Still.“

 

Then he coughs, and I can see how his body cringes under the pain, “It’s okay,” I place a hand on his back and chest to steady him, hoping the contact will ease the pain at least a little, like with a child that did scratch its knee and parents kissing the wound. 

 

To be honest, it is unbearable to watch, knowing there will be no other meeting, and it must be written all over my face because after having drunk from a water glass he reaches carefully out to touch my cheek, “you are afraid.” 

 

“Yes,” I press out. “I am sorry.” 

 

With a soft expression, I would call melancholy he says, “Don’t be, it’s just death.”

 

It makes me laugh because suddenly I have the Doctor, Gallifrey and the principle of regeneration in mind. It’s not very popular on earth, but the idea of resurrection is. What if the reincarnation is another form of regeneration, only without the golden light and the big fuss, unnoticed by us? One can only hope. Alone the faint idea of it eases the pain a little.

 

“You are still young, you’ll get over it,” he begins, making me want to object, “don’t even argue! Just take the advice from a dying old man. And in a couple of years, you’ll understand.”

 

“For a moment back in the Tardis, I wanted to make you come with me. I could heal you, and we could travel the universe till the end of our days,” I rub tired over my face because when I had the idea it was the best I ever had in my eyes, but now I realise how selfish and cruel it is.” We would have destroyed the universe in our wake, would have spent us till nothing would have been left.”

 

“You can’t beat the plan God has for your destiny,” he smiles again. “I must know.” 

 

We both chuckle and I bend down once again for a long searing kiss, “Rest now, Armand.”

 

“Love?” he reaches out to me once again after I have tugged him in, and the endearment let my eyes beam at him in blissful affection. 

 

There is something he wants to say; it’s those three words he had never spoken in their pure form, always hidden, always ciphered. I give his hand a soft squeeze, “I know. Oh, I know.” 

 

Then I curl aside him, one hand on top of his chest, he is quickly covering with his. His breath is going even. Weaker with each he takes. Many emotions are going through me, like pain and rage, fear and regret. 

 

A clock is striking twelve somewhere in the distance. 

It’s December the 4th 1642. Armand Jean de Plessis, Duc of Richelieu will fall asleep soon. 

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cardinal Richelieu indeed died December 4th, what is my birthday... strange.. just not 1642. I am for sure not historically accurate, but I guess it was clear from the start, that I wouldn't and couldn't change the ending for the Cardinal.
> 
> And still, two chapters are left.
> 
> Did you like this chapter?


	13. Intermission 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richelieu is dead, but the Doctor no more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a fic centred around Richelieu, but of course, I had to come back with the Doctor, but it was never my intention to show a detailed process of his "comeback". I think it's not necessary. This is bringing you, the companion, on needed terms with the Doctor.

Loss. Endless loss. In the wee hours of the morning, I had to leave Armand, pressing one last kiss on his cold temple before going outside to get some fresh air into my lungs.  
There must have been rained because it’s something the Doctor commented on it. When I returned to the Tardis to give her the final blood sample, she sprung into action to return to the time and place we had left the Doctor behind.

A little stunned, I stood by the isle staring at the door, waiting for something to happen, someone to storm through while the Tardis went through the process of reawakening her longtime companion and friend.

It only took minutes, but it felt like hours, my heart was beating fast, and my body trembled in anticipation and fright. I was sure to suffer a fainting fit soon.

Then.

“That was...,” the door goes open, the Doctor staggering slightly unsteady into the Tardis, his trousers dirty and his coat covered in dust which he begins to pad away while wondering when that has happened, “...strange.”

I am standing by the rail, grabbing it with one hand so hard my knuckles turn white, staring at him in disbelief. Randall. Dr Pete. Frobisher. Danny. Caecilius. Armand. My Doctor, my dear Doctor!

Seeing me he stops in his tracks, raising an eyebrow, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” his hands brush through his hair and some more dust evolving around him, wondering once more. He has no idea what has happened.

Without thinking, only led by my feelings I run over, throwing myself into him, my arms around his lean figure, close to tears.

With a gasp, he takes the impact of my body, “hugging? Why is that hugging?” he can’t hide a surprised laugh. We have never been on a regular hugging basis before.

“Shut up,” I just breath, pressing my face into his chest so he won’t see or hear my soft crying.  
It takes a second before his long arms come around me, consoling me, hugging me back, “that’s strange.”

“What is?”

“Your hair,” he gently caresses it, his hands coming down to my shoulders, making me look at him, “it’s wet. Even your eyes are wet,” his left finger brushes a tear away only to watch his wet fingers now. “Did it rain?”

All the pain dissolves into sudden happiness, “must have been,” I am unable to take my eyes off of him, not able to believe what I see. “I thought you’ve died.”

He begins to snicker, placing one arm around me as old friends sometimes do, “Me? It’s just been five minutes! Not me, not ever!”

I watch him go to the console, feeling out a few buttons, frowning at them as if there is something he is missing, “Not ever?”

“I am sure you wouldn’t allow that, would you?” he winks at me and before I can answer, he paces around the console to one of the monitors. “There is a planet I have to show you, the trees are made out of chocolate, and the sea tastes like apple juice. It has six moons, and there is an eternal sunrise.”

Shall I stay with the Doctor, or shall I go back home? It’s not a question I ask myself at this moment, because the answer was always given. You don’t leave the Doctor just like that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One final chapter incoming!
> 
> Tell me guys, how did I do!?


	14. Last Chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a year since you have lost the Cardinal, a year since the Doctor is back. A year of ups and downs. A year of uncertainty, of the Doctor, behaving strange, of you grieving. The Tardis gives you one last ride back to France.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started this fic back in Januar 2018 (!) I had a whole different ending, but it was way too light-hearted, way too "not serious" enough. Nevertheless, I tried to give it a) a meaning but b) a bit of humour. Thanks for reading this fic, thanks for leaving Kudos and Comments! It would be great to read one last comment of who you liked it in its completeness.

  
Then one day, I wake up out of a slumber our last adventure has urged me into, feeling a soft pressure on my head. Not on, but in. A familiar feeling and it needs a moment to remember — the Tardis.

After the Doctor had been resurrected, our physical link had disappeared. I hadn’t told the Doctor about what had happened and never questioned the behaviour of the Tardis. I was even happy. Who wants to have a machine beeping and wheezing in their head.

The feeling is persistent but not painful, like an urge I have to follow. In the back of my head, I begin to unravel what is the reason, knowing it very well, but pushing it away because it only would rip open old wounds.

The time after the Doctor had returned, hadn’t been easy - naturally. While I was happy to have my best friend back, I grieved the loss of the man I had loved. That they shared the same face didn’t help in my process of working it all through and out.

Leaving my room, I make my way through the corridors to the console room. Slowly, taking my time, thinking it through. The possibility, the chance this will hurt more as I can imagine but also can heal my hurt heart finally.

The Tardis must have reasons to do this to me, and by now — even after all our differences — I trust her with my life and sanity.

When I reach the door to the console room, I know. It’s been a year. Exactly. Upon the Hour.

The Doctor sits on the staircase, reading. He does that from time to time, and I always wonder why he prefers the uncomfortable metal stairs instead of reading in the soft cushioned chair in the library. I’ve never questioned him about it, and I certainly don’t want to start now.

He throws me a look, and for a second, I stand there in silence. We both don’t say a word and then without a word I step up to the console watching circular letters appear on the monitor which I can’t read, but the Tardis kindly translates them for me.

They are calculations for a trip in time and space. The numbers and coordinates she shows me are familiar, and I take a deep breath, wondering what will happen next. Behind me, I can hear the Doctor place the book aside, but not standing up. Is he in the loop?

I don’t turn around and keep being fixed on the Tardis, who starts to hum, and a few lamps around the controls begin to blink. It needs a second till I understand; I have admittance from her.  
Making another step, I begin to push some buttons, typing in the coordinates while expecting all the time that the Doctor will raise his voice. To step in and ask me what I am doing, but he doesn’t make a sound, so I proceed with my doings unharmed. When my hand is on the lever I look up to the Tardis, wait another second for a reaction of the Doctor, and when nothing comes, I pull the lever down with vigour.

The machine begins to flare and wheeze, and when she blinks again, I push the lever back up again, and she signals with a bang that we have arrived.

It’s Paris, France. 21st century. I know exactly where we are beside never having visited the place — for reasons.

Unsure if I can do what I will do next, I turn back to the Doctor uncertain. He has risen from his spot on the stairs without me having noticed. The book rests on one of the stairs, while he looks down at me with a mix of glare and questioning.

“I didn’t know you can fly the Tardis, “he states calmly.

I frown, wondering, “I didn’t know, you can.”

It earns me a thin smile and a purse of his lips, but nothing more — no objection, no question just him standing in front of me a gentle expression on his face. There is no intention of me to explain myself when he is not demanding it, and after a moment of silence, he only steps back, his hand at the rail that leads up to the gallery. Another admittance? Maybe he knows this is something between the Tardis and me, something so important that his exclusion is necessary and so vital that he doesn’t complain.

Maybe the Tardis has told him about everything that has happened to him, and what has happened while his absence with Richelieu and me in his time Lord dreams.

There is no emotional room to care left for me, and so I only nod and turn to the door stepping out into the chilly afternoon. It’s December the 4th once more, and the sun is about to vanish behind the peak of the old chapel I stand in front of.

‘The only thing I can do is to stand over your grave.’

It’s a grave only King’s, Queen’s or a First Minister gets. The Sorbonne Chapel; Cardinal Richelieu’s final resting place.

On the inside, I find the tomb, a masterpiece of a mason — Armand in the arms of the virgin Mary at his feet a grieving person.

 

It’s been 377 years, but it feels like yesterday to me. And maybe… just maybe, it was. My hand travels over the stone figure that portraits Armand, feeling out the cold hands of his, before I sit beside the tomb, my back against it, my head resting also against it, eyes closed.

How long I sit there like this, I can’t tell. I only know I try to recreate all those little moments we had, and there weren’t many, and it fills my heart with joy and pain at the same time. Only slowly I stand up and face the stone figure one last time.  
“I know it’s a little late to admit, but you meant the world to me,” there is no answer, “and I damn well miss you! Oh, just…,” he is dead, long gone, dust in the earth he had been buried centuries ago, and nothing I say or do will bring him or any moment back. I stare so hard at the features of the statue that I feel the need to burn my eyes out because I can’t take the sight anymore. “Just…”

“Love?” it’s a silent, hushed question.

My head comes up in an instant, and I swirl around staring at the man in front of me as if being struck by lightning. At first, I believe to see what I want to see, only to grasp it’s the Doctor I am staring at. He stands right in front of me, looking at me expectantly.

Tilting my head, I calculate the chance I have misheard something.  
Since I have brought back the Doctor, it is strange sometimes. There are some moments when I wonder about the men I’ve met to bring him back. All so different characters and none like the Doctor, but here and there he makes a notion, says something, raises his eyebrows in a certain way that I can’t help but not see the Doctor but someone else.

Moments in which I question where this sudden lecture about art comes I received not long ago. Where the brooding comes from I witnessed a couple of times then when he thought I wasn’t looking. Let alone the fierce he seems to battle down most of the time. But there is a particular demand from time to time when he speaks to me, and it is all so familiar. Then I wonder if he was like that before, and I just hadn’t noticed or if those trades did come with all the other men.  
It makes my head spin and burn, and so I am never able to think it to the end. Maybe, I wonder, it’s a mental block the Tardis has given me, or it’s just my own inability.

Tilting my head just the slightest, I slowly step forward. He doesn’t know about the Cardinal and me, does he? God, I don’t even know if he knows he has been dead for a couple of weeks!

Those eyes, I think, and can only see Armand in them. I would recognise them anywhere in time and space, I know that for sure, “What?”

The Doctor blinks and the expression is gone, “I said,” he walks around the tomb, “it’s an impressive work.”

Did he? Who can say? I inhale. I’ve made my goodbyes. Then again, I can see his eyes twitch to the chain around my neck, where Armand’s ring dangles. Question Marks he never puts into words.

There I notice, he has brought the book with him, holding it up, “Impressive man also, this Cardinal Richelieu,” the way the R rolls over his lips make me go weak. “First Minister of France, lover of art, cats-”

“-cats? “what cats?

The Doctor cocks an eyebrow, “The founder of France as we know it today. Sort of.”

“Cats?” it’s not getting into my head how I did miss out the cats.

“Would you…?” the book he holds gets motioned down in an unnerved gesture.

“Sorry,” I smirk and then point at the book. “What’s that anyway?” by now he stands on one side of the tomb facing me on the other.

“A book,” he raises it only for a second.

He won’t go into detail, a familiar trade, so I let him, only commenting dryly, “ah.”

With this answer, he begins to walk through the room, does as if he is interested in the art that is displayed — touching some column here, some frame there, never leaving me out of sight. It’s a game, and it won’t end until I make the first move.

“Doctor?” he is about to correct a frame that doesn’t hang askew, “When you sleep, do you sometimes dream of the men you once were?”

The question raises a short pause between us, where he seems to find the meaning and motivation in my interest. Then he answers short, turning his back on me afterwards, “No.”

It sounds so harsh, and I believe in having crossed a line, “oh.”

“Sometimes I dream about the people that accompanied me through my travels,” surprised I look at him while he looks at another statue in the room. “Sometimes, I dream about Susan, my granddaughter and the son she had on earth, about Jamie, with whom I had such fun. And of course, Sarah Jane, who deserved better than to be left behind in Aberdeen,” he turns around, “Romana, who knew well about the troubles of a Time Lord. Sometimes I even dream about Adric that stupid boy, and Ace. Ace and the TNT, God I miss those adventures with her. About my hero Lucie Miller and the sensitive C’Rizz, Rose Tyler who stopped me once from becoming like a Dalek. Donna, the noblest, my mate. Amy and Rory, my family and right before you, Clara Oswald, who has a special place in my heart. I dream about them all. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I carry them all with me, sleep or no sleep.”

The Doctor and his companions, and the best of times, but also the worst of times. The endless loss, the knowledge that at some point, he has to leave them all behind — so or so. One day, even me.

The way his eyes are looking at me all sad, ready to cry, I feel my sorrow rise, “And how do you do it? How do you not get… insane over it?”

“Five minutes,” is his answer with a smirk and I don’t know what he means, “I give them five minutes of my day for grieving, for recapitulating — then I move on. That’s the trick.”

“Clever,” I fix my attention back at Richelieu’s face.

“Before I forget,” he then begins, holding up the book and holding it out to me, a finger between the pages. “A fascinating book.”

Unsure what to expect I take it from him, opening it — my breath stops.

Quickly I turn the book to see what it is about. It’s a historical biography about Cardinal Armand Jean du Plessis 1st Duke of Richelieu and Fronsac.  
Again I stare at the Doctor. Then again I go back to the page he has marked with his finger. On the left is a ton of small text print but on the right is a print of a portrait. A woman. I’ve seen that drawing before, pinned to a wall behind Armand’s desk. 377 years ago. I gulp, “Doctor, listen—”

“— family,” he interrupts, the voice is stern.

I look baffled at the picture and then back at him, “Huh?”

It’s the way he raises his eyebrows, the way he gives the statue of the Cardinal a side glance, the way a meaningful pause accrues that makes my heart speed up a little.

“Sometimes odd things happen between here,” he makes a circular gesture with his finger, pointing upwards, “and all of time and space,” his lips purse, a soft smile appears. “Odd things, like opening a history book, you know by heart, only to find one day a page you never noticed. A picture you weren’t aware of. A picture like this.”

I look at the picture, the drawing of myself, and then to Armand, “yes.”

“This can tell a million stories, or just one,” he motions me to keep the book because it is one of the mines. I had forgotten it in the library one day. “Let’s just say this is family. From back in the days of good ol’ France.”

He comes around the tomb, about to go back to the Tardis when he stops and turns on his heels, surveying the artwork a little too long, “Do you dream?” I nod, and his eyes catch the ring around my neck again, “About him?”

“He holds a special place in my heart.”

He hums at first, “I guessed,” then he claps with his hands, “We should be off, don’t you think?” and walks off toward the exit without waiting for me.

“We should,” I call out, my hand still resting on the tomb. It’s time to let go of it.

  
Five minutes, Armand shall have it and then maybe,

one day,

we’ll meet again.

  
_Fin._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's how this story ends, and I can't believe that I finally was able to write it down and to the end after carrying the idea around for soooo long. The bit about the cats is slightly silly I think, but when I am honest I knew the real Richelieu was kind of a cat lover but I never touched it and therefore I just wanted to put it into this last chapter because sometimes you have to be silly. 
> 
> Is this the best end I could do? Or did you think, it would differently? Maybe there is a scenario when the companion returns..? Who knows!
> 
> Thanks again!

**Author's Note:**

> As written in the story, bear with me, you'll get more input of the how, why, and what within the next chapter(s). 
> 
> I am always happy about kudos, and even more happy with comments and input!


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